App Store practices: Apple defends itself before the Paris Commercial Court

Apple today defended itself before the Paris Commercial Court for imposing unbalanced conditions on developers, in a dispute that has pitted it against the French government for more than five years.

Apple denies having unbalanced practices with the App Store

The procedure is the result of an investigation launched in 2015 by the Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Prevention (DGCCRF) on the clauses of commercial contracts that bind application developers to Google and Apple. In March 2018, in the midst of tensions with the United States, which wanted to tax steel and aluminum imports, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire revealed that he had filed a complaint against Apple and Google for abusive commercial practices.

Apple and Google are accused by Bercy of imposing tariffs on French start-ups wishing to sell their applications on the App Store and the Play Store, to recover their data and to be able to unilaterally modify contracts. Bercy also accuses them of taking commissions on transactions carried out on the applications of up to 30%.

If Google was finally sentenced in March to a civil fine of 2 million euros and to modify seven contentious clauses, the procedure against Apple took longer. After having tried, without success, to refer priority questions of constitutionality, the company of Tim Cook filed today in the alternative 16 questions for a preliminary ruling.

On the merits of the case, Apple’s lawyers defended that French law was not applicable to judge the unbalanced nature of the contract clauses and that the application developers were not all business partners. They more generally criticized a “abstract action” targeting unidentified developers. The representatives of Bercy for their part denounced delaying maneuvers and insisted on “the seriousness of the practices” of Apple which would constitute “a disturbance to public order”.

The court will deliver its judgment on December 19.