San Francisco
Epic Games faces an uphill legal battle against Apple in an antitrust trial starting Monday, and a defeat for the maker of Fortnite could make it harder for United States government regulators to pursue a similar case against the iPhone maker, legal experts said.
But win or lose at the trial, Epic, which has pursued an aggressive public relations campaign against Apple alongside its court pleadings, may have already accomplished a major goal: Drawing Apple squarely into the global debate over whether and how massive technology companies should be regulated.
Apple has mostly succeeded in staying out of the regulatory crosshairs by arguing that the iPhone is a niche product in a smartphone world dominated by Google’s Android operating system. But that argument has become harder to sustain with the number of iPhone users now exceeding 1 billion.