Apple’s Tim Cook Faces Judge With Stakes Beyond $142 Billion of Apps
- CEO takes stand in case brought by Epic over App Store rules
- Regulators seeking ways to rein in expanding market power
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Inside the imposing beige and white limestone-walled federal courthouse in downtown Oakland, lawyers clad in face masks and plastic shields and armed with cartloads of corporate documents are brawling daily over tech arcana -- the Byzantine rules that govern Apple Inc.’s App Store.
The contours of Epic Games Inc.’s complaint are widely known: the game developer alleges that Apple keeps too much of the revenue raised by businesses selling wares in the marketplace and that its rules are unfair and anticompetitive. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook will take the stand as soon as Friday to argue that Apple’s rules ensure a secure and seamless user experience and that developers make bank through the App Store.