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No. 10645446
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Epic Games, Inc. v. Google LLC
No. 10645446 · Decided July 31, 2025
No. 10645446·Ninth Circuit · 2025·
FlawFinder last updated this page Apr. 2, 2026
Case Details
Court
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Decided
July 31, 2025
Citation
No. 10645446
Disposition
See opinion text.
Full Opinion
FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
In re: Google Play Store Antitrust No. 24-6256
Litigation
D.C. Nos.
______________________________
3:21-md-02981-JD
_
3:20-cv-05671-JD
EPIC GAMES, INC., a Maryland
Corporation,
OPINION
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
GOOGLE LLC; GOOGLE
IRELAND, LTD.; GOOGLE
COMMERCE, LTD.; GOOGLE
ASIA PACIFIC PTE, LTD.;
GOOGLE PAYMENT CORP.,
Defendants - Appellants.
EPIC GAMES, INC., Nos. 24-6274
25-303
Plaintiff - Appellee,
D.C. No.
v. 3:20-cv-05671-JD
2 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
GOOGLE LLC; GOOGLE
IRELAND, LTD.; GOOGLE
COMMERCE, LTD.; GOOGLE
ASIA PACIFIC PTE, LTD.;
GOOGLE PAYMENT CORP.,
Defendants - Appellants.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
James Donato, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted February 3, 2025
San Francisco, California
Filed July 31, 2025
Before: M. Margaret McKeown, Danielle J. Forrest, and
Gabriel P. Sanchez, Circuit Judges.
Opinion by Judge McKeown
SUMMARY *
[Antitrust
The panel affirmed a jury verdict and the district court’s
entry of a permanent injunction against Google in Epic
*
This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has
been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 3
Games, Inc.’s antitrust lawsuit filed in response to Google’s
removal of Epic’s Fortnite video game from the Google Play
Store for noncompliance with its terms of service.
Google removed Fortnite from the Play Store after Epic
embedded secret code into the app’s software so that players
making in-app purchases would bypass the required
payment-processing systems by which Google then charged
30% commission.
The jury found that Epic had proven the relevant product
markets for Android app distribution and Android in-app
billing services and a relevant geographic market of
“worldwide excluding China.” The jury also found that
Google violated both federal and California antitrust law by
willfully acquiring or maintaining monopoly power in those
markets, unreasonably restraining trade, and unlawfully
tying use of the Play Store to Google Play Billing. The
district court entered a three-year injunction that prohibits
Google from providing certain benefits to app distributors,
developers, original equipment manufacturers, or carriers in
exchange for advantaging the Play Store.
The panel rejected Google’s claim that a decision in
Apple’s favor in a lawsuit Epic filed at the same time against
Apple precludes Epic from defining the market differently
in this case.
The panel held that the district court did not abuse its
discretion in proceeding with a jury trial on Epic’s equitable
claims and Google’s damages counterclaims.
The panel held that the district court did not abuse its
discretion in declining to give a single-brand aftermarket
jury instruction or in its framing of a Rule of Reason
instruction.
4 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
The panel held that the injunction was supported by the
jury’s verdict as well as the district court’s own findings.
COUNSEL
Gary A. Bornstein (argued), Christine Varney, Antony L.
Ryan, Wes Earnhardt, Justin C. Clarke, Lauren A.
Moskowitz, M. Brent Byars, Omid Nasab, Yonatan Even,
and Michael J. Zaken, Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP, New
York, New York; John C. Hueston, Sourabh Mishra,
Hueston Hennigan LLP, Newport Beach, California; Joseph
Reiter, Hueston Hennigan LLP, Los Angeles, California;
Paul J. Riehle, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, San
Francisco, California; Daniel Woofter and Kevin Russell,
Russell & Woofter LLC, Washington, D.C.; Thomas C.
Goldstein, Goldstein & Russell P.C., Washington D.C.; for
Plaintiff-Appellee.
Jessica L. Ellsworth (argued), Neal K. Katyal, Reedy C.
Swanson, and Natalie Salmanowitz, Hogan Lovells LLP,
Washington, D.C.; Johannah Cassel-Walker, Hogan Lovells
LLP, San Francisco, California; Katherine B. Wellington,
Hogan Lovells LLP, Boston, Massachusetts; Mackenzie D.
Austin, Hogan Lovells LLP, Los Angeles, California; Brian
C. Rocca, Michelle P. Chiu, Sujal J. Shah, and Leigha
Beckman, Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP, San Francisco,
California; Glenn D. Pomerantz and Kuruvilla Olasa,
Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, Los Angeles, California;
Justin P. Raphael and Dane P. Shikman, Munger Tolles &
Olson LLP, San Francisco, California; Jonathan I. Kravis,
Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, Washington, D.C.; for
Defendants-Appellants.
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 5
David G.B. Lawrence (argued), Policy Director; Patrick M.
Kuhlmann, Nickolai G. Levin, and Daniel E. Haar,
Attorneys, Appellate Section; Spencer D. Smith, Counsel;
John W. Elias, Deputy Assistant Attorney General; Doha
Mekki, Acting Assistant Attorney General; Jonathan S.
Kanter, Assistant Attorney General; Antitrust Division;
United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.;
Mark Hegedus, Attorney; Synda Mark, Deputy Assistant
Director; Kelly Signs, Assistant Director; Shaoul Sussman,
Associate Director; Henry Liu, Director; Anisha S.
Dasgupta, General Counsel; Federal Trade Commission,
Washington, D.C.; for Amici Curiae the United States & the
Federal Trade Commission.
Amy R. Upshaw, Christopher C. Yook, and Jeffery S.
Spigel, King & Spalding LLP, Washington, D.C., for Amici
Curiae Gregory J. Werden & Luke M. Froeb.
Marc R. Lewis and Rina Plotkin, Lewis & Llewellyn LLP,
San Francisco, California, for Amici Curiae Information
Technology & Innovation Foundation and Roblox
Corporation.
Steven A. Hirsch, Ben Berkowitz, and Sara R. Fitzpatrick,
Complex Appellate Litigation Group LLP, San Francisco,
California; Scott A. Keller, Lehotsky Keller Cohn LLP,
Washington, D.C.; for Amici Curiae Chamber of Progress,
Computer & Communications Industry Association,
NetChoice, and Consumer Technology Association.
Scott A. Keller and Steven P. Lehotsky, Lehotsky Keller
Cohn LLP, Washington, D.C.; Drew F. Waldbeser,
Lehotsky Keller Cohn LLP, Atlanta, Georgia; for Amici
Curiae Antitrust Law Professors Thomas A. Lambert and
John M. Yun.
6 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
David C. Kiernan, Jones Day, San Francisco, California;
Koren W. Wong-Ervin, Jones Day, Washington, D.C.; Kelly
H. Rodriguez, Jones Day, Minneapolis, Minnesota; for
Amici Curiae Federal Antitrust Enforcers.
Jonathan Y. Ellis, McGuireWoods LLP, Raleigh, North
Carolina; Nicholas J. Giles and Joshua D. Wade,
McGuireWoods LLP, Richmond, Virginia; Brian Scarpelli,
ACT The App Association, Washington, D.C.; for Amicus
Curiae ACT The App Association.
Jonathan A. Patchen, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, San
Francisco, California; Matthew Freimuth, Willkie Farr &
Gallagher LLP, New York, New York; Geoffrey A. Manne
and Daniel J. Gilman, International Center for Law &
Economics, Portland, Oregon; for Amici Curiae The
International Center for Law & Economics and Scholars of
Law and Economics.
Robert T. Smith and Neal S. Mehrotra, Katten Muchin
Rosenman LLP, Washington, D.C., for Amici Curiae
Computer Security Experts John Mitchell, Serge Egelman,
Nikia Borisov, Kevin Butler, Amit Elazari, Guofei Gi, and
Sharad Mehrotra.
Jack E. Pace III, Gina M. Chiappetta, and Daniel J.
Grossbaum, White & Case LLP, New York, New York;
Mark Davies, White & Case LLP, Washington, D.C.; for
Amici Curiae Law and Business School Professors.
Anthony P. Schoenberg, Christopher C. Wheeler, and Hilary
C. Krase, Farella Braun & Martel LLP, San Francisco,
California, for Amici Curiae Fyouture, Firecracker Software
LLC, Visual Blasters LLC, BetterTime Co., and Speeko,
Inc..
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 7
Matthew D. Field and Harley L. Geiger, Venable LLP,
Washington, D.C., for Amicus Curiae The Center for
Cybersecurity Policy and Law.
Calvin House, Gutierrez Preciado & House LLP, Pasadena,
California, for Amicus Curiae Civil Justice Association of
California.
John M. Reeves, Reeves Law LLC, St. Louis, Missouri; Curt
Levey, The Committee for Justice, Washington, D.C.; for
Amicus Curiae The Committee for Justice.
Allison W. Acker, Bass Berry & Sims PLC, Nashville,
Tennessee; Devin Watkins and Dan Greenberg, Competitive
Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C.; for Amicus Curiae
Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Roy T. Englert Jr., Matthew M. Madden, and Aryeh
Mellman. Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer (US) LLP,
Washington, D.C., for Amici Curiae Former National
Security Officials and Scholars.
Aaron M. Panner, Alex A. Parkinson, Shunhe Wang, and
Jarrod A. Nagurka; Kellogg Hansen Todd Figel & Frederick
PLLC, Washington, D.C.; for Amicus Curiae Microsoft
Corporation.
Kathleen R. Hartnett, Cooley LLP, San Francisco,
California; Alexander J. Kasner and Jennifer L. Portis,
Cooly LLP, Washington, D.C.; Allison W. O'Neill, Cooley
LLP, San Diego, California; for Amicus Curiae Professor
Stephen I. Vladeck.
Jean-Claude Andre, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP,
Santa Monica, California; Eric P. Schroeder and Slade
Mendenhall, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP, Atlanta,
Georgia; Barbara A. Smith and Seth M. Reid, Bryan Cave
8 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
Leighton Paisner LLP, St. Louis, Missouri; Tyler S. Badgley
and Maria C. Monaghan, Chamber of Commerce of the
United States of America, Washington D.C.; for Amicus
Curiae Chamber of Commerce of the United States of
America.
Cory L. Andrews, Washington Legal Foundation,
Washington, D.C., for Amicus Curiae Washington Legal
Foundation.
David W. Kesselman and Wesley A. Sweger, Kesselman
Brantly Stockinger LLP, Manhattan Beach, California, for
Amici Curiae Professors of Law and Economics and the
American Antitrust Institute.
Christopher L. Lebsock, Hausfeld LLP, San Francisco,
California; YoungKi Rhee, We The People Law Group,
Seoul, South Korea; for Amicus Curiae STACO LINK Co.,
Ltd..
Lee A. Hepner and Laurel Kilgour, American Economic
Liberties Project, San Francisco, California, for Amicus
Curiae American Economic Liberties Project.
Alexander B. Aronson, Court Accountability Action,
Concord, Massachusetts, for Amicus Curiae Professor Paul
M. Collins Jr..
Mitchell L. Stoltz, Electronic Frontier Foundation, San
Francisco, California, for Amicus Curiae Electronic Frontier
Foundation.
Judd E. Stone II, Christopher D. Hilton, Ari Cuenin, Michael
R. Abrams, and Cody C. Coll, Stone Hilton PLLC, Austin,
Texas, for Amici Curiae Aptoide S.A. and One Store Co.,
Ltd..
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 9
OPINION
McKEOWN, Circuit Judge:
In the world of adrenaline-fueled survival that
epitomizes the video game Fortnite, winners are decided in
blazes of destruction and glory. By contrast, the outcome of
this case—centered on Fortnite’s developer, Epic Games,
and the Google Android platform—turns on longstanding
principles of trial procedure, antitrust, and injunctive
remedies.
In 2018, videogame developer Epic Games released its
immensely popular cross-platform game Fortnite as a
smartphone app. For two years, Epic sought to distribute the
game through direct mobile downloads from its website and
through Samsung’s Galaxy Store. In 2020, after Epic
“realized that Google Play was the only hope that [Epic] had
for actually reaching users,” Epic reluctantly decided to offer
the Fortnite app on both the Google Play Store (which
operates on the Android operating system) and the Apple
App Store (which operates on the iOS operating system).
Fortnite is offered as a free download; the game generates
revenue for Epic via players’ purchase of special in-game
features.
Shortly after Fortnite’s launch on the Apple App Store
and Google Play Store, Epic embedded secret code into the
app’s software so that players making in-app purchases
would bypass the required payment-processing systems by
which Apple and Google then charged 30% commission.
Epic dubbed these circumvention efforts “Project Liberty,”
part of its ongoing—and soon highly publicized—protest
against mainstream app stores’ restriction of developers’ and
users’ choices for app distribution and in-app billing.
10 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
Almost immediately, Google and Apple removed Fortnite
from the Play Store and App Store for noncompliance with
their terms of service. Epic responded by filing antitrust
suits against both Apple and Google. The two suits
proceeded separately. The suit against Apple was resolved
in Apple’s favor.
Epic’s suit against Google followed. After a 15-day trial
involving 45 witnesses, the jury found that Google had
violated federal and state antitrust laws in the markets for
Android app distribution and Android in-app billing
services. The district court held extensive post-trial
proceedings and then entered a permanent injunction against
Google to restore market competition. We affirm the jury’s
verdict and uphold the district court’s injunction. 1
Background
Smartphones have two key components: the physical
hardware and the operating system. The operating system
manages the interaction between the phone’s hardware
resources and separate software applications (or “apps”) like
TikTok and WhatsApp. Google and Apple own two popular
operating systems: Android and iOS, respectively. Apple’s
iOS system is tied to the Apple hardware and is designed to
prevent independent modification, creating a “walled
garden.” By contrast, Google’s Android system is publicly
available and free for anyone to access, modify, and
distribute. Google itself engineered and produced a line of
smartphones that run on the Android system. But in
1
In connection with these proceedings, we received amicus curiae briefs
from an array of interested parties, including federal agencies, nonprofit
organizations, corporations, and professional associations. The briefs
were helpful to our understanding of this case, and we thank amici for
their participation.
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 11
addition, Google also licenses Android to hundreds of
original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) that make
smartphones. Companies like Samsung and Motorola, for
example, negotiate licenses to have Android pre-installed
onto their products. As a result, Android runs on a variety
of smartphones that are not Google-brand devices. All non-
Apple smartphones sold worldwide, excluding China, use
Android.
Apps are offered and installed separately from the
operating system. But an app can only be installed on a
device if it is compatible with that device’s operating system.
Thus, iOS apps work only on Apple iPhones that run on iOS;
Android apps work only on Android smartphones. The
applicable operating system creates an “ecosystem” of app
development, distribution, maintenance, and security.
Google, in addition to owning and primarily developing
the Android operating system, owns and operates the Google
Play Store (“Play Store”), a platform for distributing apps to
Android users. The Play Store has an enormous catalog of
more than two million apps. In two-sided markets like this
one—where Android users and Android app developers (the
“two sides”) rely on the platform as an intermediary for user-
developer transactions—the platform benefits from
significant network effects wherein “the value of the services
that a two-sided platform provides increases as the number
of participants on both sides of the platform increases.”
Ohio v. Am. Express Co., 585 U.S. 529, 535 (2018). Users
are attracted to large catalogs, and developers are attracted
to large user bases.
Google magnified these network effects and entrenched
its dominant position in Android app distribution by its
intentional efforts to frustrate users’ access to and use of
12 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
alternatives to the Play Store, such as developer websites as
well as other Android app stores.
Although an Android app developer can enable potential
users to download its apps directly from a developer-specific
website (“direct downloading” or, as Google refers to it,
“sideloading”), Google’s Android operating system creates
“friction” that deters Android users from completing
downloads this way. First, Android’s default settings disable
direct downloading. Even those users savvy enough to
change the default settings must then click through a series
of “scare screens”—sometimes as many as 14—to complete
a direct download. Some of these screens notified the user
that the app was being downloaded from an “unknown
source,” that the software could harm their device, and that
the user was taking responsibility for any damage that might
result from completing the download. Android’s scare
screens do not reflect any security assessment of the
intended download sources; these screens appear whether
the intended download source is a trusted developer’s
website or a hypothetical “illstealyourinfo.com.” Thus the
“scare screens” operate as a deterrent to downloading apps
other than directly via the Play Store.
Efforts to download Fortnite illustrate the practical
import of barriers erected by Google. Android users had to
successfully navigate more than 15 steps to complete a direct
download of Fortnite. Such “friction” “degrad[ed] the
quality of the download experience” from websites like
Epic’s. Epic found that, of the Android users who initiated
the process to download Fortnite directly, 35% abandoned
the process after encountering Google’s “warning
messages.”
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 13
In its dealings with OEMs, Google also sought to
obstruct access to alternative app stores. Google’s mobile
contract, the Mobile Application Distribution Agreement
(“MADA”), effectively required Android OEMs to
preinstall the Play Store on the default home screen of their
smartphones. Google’s revenue-sharing agreements with a
“premier tier” of these OEMs had the added effect of making
the Play Store the only preinstalled app store on their phones.
And Google’s proposal to Samsung, denominated “Project
Banyan,” would have compensated an especially formidable
OEM/app-distribution competitor to “drive down” its app-
distribution market share and turn the Samsung Galaxy Store
into a throughway for more Play Store traffic. Samsung’s
representatives expressly understood that the purpose of
“Project Banyan” was to “[p]revent unnecessary
competition [with the] store.” As Epic’s expert testified
about these revenue-sharing arrangements, “these
provisions, this conduct, disincentivizes” OEMs from
competing with the Play Store.
When Epic suddenly posed a threat to the Play Store’s
dominance, Google went further still. In 2018, Epic initially
told Google that it would not be introducing an Android
version of Fortnite on the Play Store. Google feared that the
game’s off-Play launch could “legitimize” another Android
app store and create “contagion” leading other software
developers to leave the Play Store. To defend against that
scenario, Google initiated Project Hug: a series of special
agreements with 22 top game developers, including
Activision (creator of the popular video game Call of Duty),
under which the developers received cash payments and
other benefits not to launch on any Android app store other
than the Play Store.
14 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
Network effects, default settings and scare screens to
deter direct downloads, plus strategic deals to limit the use
of alternative stores proved a potent cocktail: As of 2020, the
Play Store accounted for 95% of all Android app downloads
in the United States, and more than 80% around the world
(excluding China).
Google leveraged its significant market share in app
distribution to maximize its profits from the Play Store. For
instance, all developers offering apps on the Play Store are
required by a Developer Distribution Agreement (“DDA”)
to process in-app purchases using Google Play Billing and
pay a hefty commission on nearly all in-app transactions. 2
As of 2021, the Play Store was turning a 71% operating
profit.
Convinced that Google was abusing its power in the
Android app distribution and in-app billing markets, Epic
sued Google shortly after Fortnite was removed from the
Play Store in August 2020 for violations under the Sherman
Act, California’s Cartwright Act, and California’s Unfair
Competition Law (“UCL”). Google counterclaimed for
breach of the DDA. Between 2020 and 2023, additional
claimants—other developers, consumers, and state attorneys
general—sued Google for antitrust violations. All these
related claims were consolidated into a single multidistrict
litigation.
In 2021, the district court decided that all jury-triable
issues common to the parties’ legal and equitable claims
would be decided in a single jury trial. In April 2023, the
2
Google originally set its 30% commission to match Apple’s service fee.
Seven months after Epic filed its lawsuit, Google introduced programs
that lowered the fee to 15% in limited circumstances.
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 15
court set a November 2023 trial date. But, between April
and November, every plaintiff other than Epic settled,
leaving for trial only Epic’s antitrust claims for equitable
relief and Google’s counterclaims for damages. Epic’s UCL
claims were held for later ruling by the court, per the parties’
joint submission.
On December 11, 2023, the jury returned a unanimous
verdict in favor of Epic. On the antitrust claims, the jury
found that Epic had proven the relevant product markets for
Android app distribution and Android in-app billing services
and a relevant geographic market of “worldwide excluding
China.” And the jury found that Google violated both
federal and California antitrust law by willfully acquiring or
maintaining monopoly power in those markets,
unreasonably restraining trade, and unlawfully tying use of
the Play Store to Google Play Billing. Although Google’s
counterclaims for damages initially were part of the trial,
during trial the parties withdrew these claims from the jury
and later settled them.
Remedies proceedings followed the trial, with extensive
briefing and two evidentiary hearings. On October 7, 2024,
the district court entered a permanent injunction and an
explanatory order that also resolved Epic’s UCL claim
(“Order re: UCL Claim and Injunctive Relief”). The three-
year injunction prohibits Google from providing certain
benefits to app distributors, developers, OEMs, or carriers in
exchange for advantaging the Play Store. It also mandates
that Google allow developers offering apps on the Play Store
to provide users with information about and access to
alternative app billing, pricing, and distribution channels.
Apropos of the claims, the injunction includes “catalog
sharing” and “app-store distribution” provisions. The first
16 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
requires that Google “permit third-party Android app stores
to access the Google Play Store’s catalog of apps,” and the
second requires Google to allow “the distribution of third-
party Android app distribution platforms or stores through
the Google Play Store.” Google was given eight months to
comply with the catalog sharing and app-store distribution
requirements. To review and resolve any issues that arose
during that implementation process, the injunction also
directed the creation of a three-person Technical Committee
comprising members selected by both parties. Google
appeals both the liability verdict 3 and the injunction. 4
Analysis
We begin with Google’s claim, which we reject, that the
decision in the Epic v. Apple litigation precludes Epic from
defining the market differently in this case. We then move
to the jury issues, confirming that the district court did not
abuse its discretion in proceeding with a single jury trial on
Epic’s equitable claims and Google’s damages
3
In addition to challenging antitrust liability, Google argues that the
UCL liability relies on the antitrust verdicts and thus rises or falls with
those claims. Not so. The UCL forbids not only “unlawful” but “unfair”
conduct, thus allowing for liability even when there is a failure to prove
an antitrust claim, as we held in Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 67 F.4th
946, 1001 (9th Cir. 2023) (“Neither Apple nor any of its amici cite a
single case in which a court has held that, when a federal antitrust claim
suffers from a proof deficiency, rather than a categorical legal bar, the
conduct underlying the antitrust claim cannot be deemed unfair pursuant
to the UCL.”). Google’s attempt to tether the UCL claim to the antitrust
claims is “foreclosed by California law.” Id. at 1001. The UCL claim
survives independently of any antitrust liability.
4
Google filed a motion to stay the permanent injunction pending appeal.
The district court granted a partial stay pending our resolution of that
motion. The stay motion on appeal is denied as moot in light of our
decision.
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 17
counterclaims. Nor did the district court abuse its discretion
in declining to give a single-brand aftermarket jury
instruction or in its framing of the Rule of Reason
instruction. Finally, we affirm the district court’s injunction,
which was supported by the jury’s verdict as well as the
district court’s own findings.
I. The Epic v. Apple Litigation Findings Are Not
Preclusive
Market definition is a central and hotly contested aspect
of nearly every antitrust case. Little wonder, then, that the
parties have diametrically opposed views on this issue.
Google claims that the relevant market determination in
Epic’s prior suit against Apple binds Epic here, whereas Epic
maintains that there is no preclusive effect.
Reviewing de novo, we agree with the district court that
the market definition in Epic’s suit against Apple is not
preclusive in this litigation. Jacobs v. CBS Broad., Inc., 291
F.3d 1173, 1176 (9th Cir. 2002) (reviewing de novo district
court’s determination of preclusion). Google homes in on
the finding in Epic v. Apple that Apple and Google are
competitors in the market for “digital mobile gaming
transactions.” See Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 559 F.
Supp. 3d 898, 921 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 10, 2021), aff’d 67 F.4th
946, 981 (9th Cir. 2023) (affirming on the issue of market
definition). 5 That single determination, however, does not
5
Google’s issue-preclusion argument bookended its advocacy before the
district court. Before trial, the district court determined that Google’s
preclusion argument was untimely and without “good cause excusing the
delay.” The court emphasized that the matter should have been raised
on summary judgment but concluded that issue preclusion was not
appropriate in any event. Google does not challenge these rulings on
18 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
preclude an independent analysis of the very different
relationship between Epic and Google, the relevant
submarket in the Android platform, or the distinct market-
definition issues in the two suits.
A. The Apple Litigation: Trial and Appeal
Filed on the same day as Epic’s case against Google,
Epic’s case against Apple proceeded first in time before
Judge Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of
California. The two parties offered competing definitions of
the relevant market, with Epic arguing for Apple’s total
monopoly power in “an antitrust market of one,” and Apple
proposing a broader market including “all digital video
games.” Apple, 559 F. Supp. 3d at 921.
The district court ultimately ascertained a market of
“digital mobile gaming transactions.” Id. at 921, 954–55,
1021–26. From there, the court found that Apple exercised
a “considerable” but not necessarily monopolistic level of
market power, in part because the company had to compete
with Google. Id. at 1030–32. These determinations
supported the conclusion that Apple was not liable on any of
the federal antitrust causes of action, though the court found
that Apple violated California’s UCL and entered an
injunction against Apple’s use of anti-steering provisions to
keep consumers from transacting outside the App Store’s
payment processing systems. Id. at 1052–59.
Epic and Apple cross-appealed, and we affirmed on all
substantive issues. Apple, 67 F.4th at 966. Though we
agreed with Epic that the district court erred in categorically
rejecting its proposed iOS foremarket, we deemed that error
appeal. Google’s timely post-trial motion under Rule 52 preserved the
preclusion issue.
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 19
harmless in light of Epic’s failure to demonstrate consumers’
lack of awareness about the alleged aftermarket restrictions.
Id. at 978, 979, 980–81. Importantly, “Apple offered non-
pretextual, legally cognizable procompetitive rationales for
its app-distribution and [billing] restrictions.” Id. at 985.
And, as we held, “[e]ven assuming Apple has monopoly
power, Epic failed to prove Apple’s conduct was
anticompetitive.” Id. at 999. Apple’s challenges to the UCL
ruling and remedy fell short. We further held that federal
antitrust doctrine did not preclude liability for anti-steering
provisions under state law; that the district court did not
clearly err in finding that Epic had suffered irreparable harm;
and that a nationwide injunction did not constitute an abuse
of discretion “because the scope [wa]s tied to Epic’s
injuries.” Id. at 1002–03. We reversed only with regard to
Epic’s contractual obligations to pay attorneys’ fees. Id. at
1003–04. 6
B. Issue Preclusion Requirements Are Not Met
Google now seeks to preclude Epic’s suit in light of the
Apple judgment and decision. Issue preclusion requires that
“(1) the issue at stake was identical in both proceedings;
(2) the issue was actually litigated and decided in the prior
proceedings; (3) there was a full and fair opportunity to
litigate the issue; and (4) the issue was necessary to decide
the merits.” Love v. Villacana, 73 F.4th 751, 754 (9th Cir.
2023) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
Google’s preclusion argument fails at both the first and
6
On April 30, 2025, the district court issued an order finding that Apple
had failed to comply with the injunction and that “Apple’s continued
attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated.” Order
Granting Epic Games, Inc.’s Motion to Enforce Injunction, 4:20-CV-
05640-YGR, 2025 WL 1260190, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 30, 2025).
20 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
second steps because the market definition question was
neither identical to the issue in this case nor litigated and
decided in Apple. The difference in the market-definition
issues is the death knell for Google’s argument.
It is well established that the relevant market “can be
determined only after a factual inquiry into the ‘commercial
realities’ faced by consumers.” Eastman Kodak Co. v.
Image Tech. Servs., Inc., 504 U.S. 451, 482 (1992) (citing
United States v. Grinnell Corp., 384 U.S. 563, 572 (1966)).
This case-by-case inquiry underlies the principle that
relevant markets are not independent, freestanding entities
defined in a vacuum. Our sister circuits recognize that “the
nature of the claim can affect the proper market definition”
and counsel that courts “remember[] to ask, in defining the
market, why we are doing so: that is, what is the antitrust
question in this case that market definition aims to answer?”
United States Healthcare, Inc. v. Healthsource, Inc., 986
F.2d 589, 598 (1st Cir. 1993). Recently, we endorsed this
principle in concluding that the “market definition must be
relevant to the theory of harm at issue.” Teradata Corp. v.
SAP SE, 124 F.4th 555, 570 (9th Cir. 2024) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
It follows from the logic of Kodak and Teradata that the
market-definition issue in Epic’s two lawsuits was not
“identical” for the purposes of issue preclusion, because
Epic’s claims against Apple involved meaningfully different
commercial realities and theories of harm from its claims
against Google. In short, we conclude that “the issue at
stake” was not identical in the two cases.
To begin, the commercial realities are different. Apple’s
“walled garden” is, as the district court in Apple noted,
markedly different from Google’s “open distribution”
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 21
approach. 559 F. Supp. 3d at 1036–40. Google admits as
much, noting that “Android’s open philosophy offers users
and developers wider choices” than iOS does, even as that
openness “limit[s] Google’s ability to directly protect users
from encountering malware and security threats when they
download apps.” As a consequence of its business model,
Apple does not license iOS to other OEMs in the way that
Google licenses Android to Samsung, Motorola, and other
smartphone manufacturers. Indeed, because Apple
manufactures its own phones, Apple effectively has no
relationship with other OEMs. Apple’s “walled garden” also
creates different dynamics in app distribution channels.
Apple’s iPhones do not support any third-party app stores,
and iOS disables direct downloads of apps from the web.
See id. at 1005 (“Apple currently prevents direct distribution
from the web using technical measures.”).
The theories of harm in the two cases are also different.
Epic articulated theories of harm against Apple that it did not
bring against Google. Because Apple vertically integrates
its hardware, iOS operating system, and app store, a
consumer locked in through any one part of the stack is, in
effect, locked into the entire system. Therefore, numerous
Apple-unique product features were relevant to Epic’s
theory of harm—from the “stickiness” of iMessage to the
overall “speed and reliability provided by iPhones”—
because those features increased consumers’ switching
costs. Id. at 957–60 (“Apple’s evidence strongly suggests
that low switching between operating systems stems from
overall satisfaction with existing devices, rather [than] any
‘lock-in.’”); see also, e.g., 4:20-cv-05640-YGR, Dkt. #616
(Epic’s opening statement), p. 11‒13. Epic also complained
that Apple’s agreements with developers precluded Epic
from distributing or creating third-party app stores—conduct
22 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
not at issue in the Google litigation. At the time of trial, there
were no competing app stores on iOS.
The difference in the markets also led Epic to articulate
theories of harm against Google that were not brought
against Apple. For example, Epic alleged that Google’s
conduct—requiring OEMs to install Google Play on the
home screen of every device the OEM makes—had harmed
Epic. Because Apple does not license its operating system
to other OEMs, this type of alleged anticompetitive behavior
was simply not at issue in the Apple litigation. Epic also
alleged that Google made deals to keep other app stores off
OEMs’ home screens. Because Apple’s iPhones preclude
third-party app stores altogether, these strategic dealings
were not at issue. As Google’s attorney articulated in a 2023
hearing before the district court: “For . . . iPhones, there’s
only one App Store. There always has been only one App
Store. That’s not true in Android. So there’s a difference
that already exists, a fundamental difference, an important
difference for this case.” Nor—for much the same reason—
was there evidence in the Apple litigation of alleged
monopolistic agreements with app developers to refrain
from offering their apps on any other app store, or evidence
of Apple manipulating its operating system to deter direct
downloads.
These are not fringe issues. These are the issues that
formed the core of the market definition in each suit. As the
district court noted, “[Epic] took a wholly different approach
for the antitrust claims against Google, and offered wholly
different evidence about relevant markets than that offered
in the case against Apple.” Even Google’s own digital
markets expert did not initially seek to define a market
analogous, let alone identical, to the one that Apple sought
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 23
in Apple or the market defined by the district court in that
case.
It is of little consequence that Apple and Google were
previously found to compete in the market for “digital
mobile gaming transactions” in the Apple litigation. 559 F.
Supp. 3d at 921. The Google trial focused on gaming within
the Android ecosystem. That the markets in this case—for
Android app distribution and Android in-app billing—
overlap with or may constitute submarkets of the “digital
mobile gaming transactions” market does not make them
identical markets. Recognizing distinctions between
overlapping markets is not “inherently contradictory.” Olin
Corp. v. FTC, 986 F.2d 1295, 1301 (9th Cir. 1993)
(establishing a relevant submarket for chemical compounds
was not inconsistent with a broader market for pool
sanitizers).
This framing also conforms to the real-world experience
of overlapping markets and submarkets. For example,
McDonald’s might compete against Chick-fil-A in the fast-
food market yet not compete against Chick-fil-A in the
hamburger fast-food market (and instead compete with
Wendy’s, Burger King, Sonic, and In-N-Out Burger).
Although Google and Apple compete for mobile-gaming
downloads and mobile-gaming in-app transactions, they do
not compete in the Android-only app distribution and in-app
billing markets, where Google competes against Samsung,
Amazon, and others.
Google’s argument is further at odds with Section 2 of
the Sherman Act, which prohibits monopolization of
submarkets—“any part of the classes of things” forming
U.S. trade or commerce—as much as it prohibits
monopolization of broader markets. Ind. Farmer’s Guide
24 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
Publ’g Co. v. Prairie Farmer Publ’g Co., 293 U.S. 268, 279
(1934) (emphasis added). As the Department of Justice
(“DOJ”) Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade
Commission (“FTC”) emphasize in their amicus brief,
“[j]ust because parties compete in one market does not mean,
as a matter of law, that there cannot be a narrower or
overlapping market in which the parties do not compete.”
This lesson follows Supreme Court guidance that “within [a]
broad market, well-defined submarkets may exist which, in
themselves, constitute product markets for antitrust
purposes.” Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U.S. 294,
325 (1962). To conclude otherwise would effectively render
a court’s definition of a given market a universal ban on
antitrust action in any market within or overlapping that
market. Consistent with the Supreme Court’s interpretation
of the Sherman Act, we decline to hamstring antitrust
jurisprudence in this way.
At bottom, Google’s preclusion argument fails due to the
absence of an identical issue. 7 The Apple litigation involved
market realities and theories of anticompetitive harms that
were separate and distinct from those involved in this case.
Epic’s allegations against Google required an independent
analysis to determine the relevant market. And the harm-
7
Even if issue preclusion were available, we would review for abuse of
discretion the district court’s decision not to apply the doctrine. SEC v.
Stein, 906 F.3d 823, 828 (9th Cir. 2018). Despite the parties’ heated
debates over market definition, and the fact that the appeal in Apple was
decided on April 24, 2023, Google waited until less than six weeks
before trial to raise issue preclusion. Given that expert testimony and
other fact evidence on the critical issue of market definition had been
fully developed by that time, this delay amply supports the district
court’s exercise of its discretion to decline application of issue
preclusion.
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 25
specific market definition applicable here was not “actually
litigated” or “decided” in Apple. Love, 73 F.4th at 754.
II. Denying Google’s Motion to Bifurcate and Holding
a Jury Trial Was Not an Abuse of Discretion
Throughout the litigation, both sides repeatedly changed
their positions on the availability and propriety of a jury trial
and whether the trial should be bifurcated into separate jury
and bench trials. What remained constant was the district
court’s message that there would be one jury trial for all
common issues and that there was considerable overlapping
evidence on equitable and legal issues: “I have said from
Day One, there will not be multiple jury trials. It’s going to
be one and done for everything.” Just before trial was set to
begin, Google asked for a bench trial on Epic’s antitrust
claims but maintained its demand for a jury trial on its
counterclaims. Google now claims the court erred in holding
a single jury trial. We conclude that the district court did not
abuse its discretion in declining to bifurcate the trial and
holding a combined jury trial on both the legal and equitable
issues.
A. The Winding Road to the Jury Trial
Epic’s complaint against Google sought only injunctive
relief. In response, Google filed contract counterclaims
seeking damages and demanded a jury trial on all jury-triable
claims. Epic’s Answer to Google’s Counterclaims denied
Google’s entitlement to a jury trial.
During the discovery period, the parties had ongoing
discussions regarding the configuration of trial. For
example, as early as December 16, 2021, Epic suggested it
should have a partially separate trial from the other plaintiffs.
The district court rejected that approach.
26 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
The parties, which then included numerous plaintiffs,
eventually coalesced around the idea of a jury trial on
virtually all claims, including Epic’s antitrust claims. In
May 2023, the parties filed a Joint Submission Regarding
Trial Proposal agreeing “that all claims by all Plaintiffs are
triable to a jury” (except for certain state law claims) and that
Google’s counterclaims against Epic should be tried to the
same jury. At this stage, the litigation included plaintiffs like
Match that, unlike Epic, sought damages.
In July 2023, Epic and Match filed a motion to bifurcate
Google’s counterclaims and hold a separate trial on those
claims. Google opposed bifurcation, arguing substantial
overlap in evidence between its counterclaims and its
defenses against Epic’s antitrust claims. Siding with
Google, the district court denied the motion to bifurcate.
Prior to October 2023, as the litigation rolled on, some
plaintiffs settled with Google. On October 12, the States and
the putative consumer class settled, leaving only Match and
Epic asserting claims against Google. During a hearing that
same day, Google raised the prospect of a bench trial on
Epic’s claims if a settlement with Match was reached,
though Google reiterated its demand for a jury trial on its
counterclaims against Epic. The district court held a pretrial
conference on October 19 and, in its order on October 20,
confirmed the case would proceed by jury trial, directing the
parties to submit updated jury instructions by October 25.
On Halloween, less than two weeks later, Google alerted
the district court that it had settled with Match. The district
court immediately ordered briefing on the impact of the
settlement on the jury trial. Google’s Statement on a Non-
Jury Trial argued for a bench trial on Epic’s claims and
defenses. Google also stated it had offered to consent to a
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 27
bench trial on its counterclaims, but Epic declined to
consent. Given Epic’s refusal, Google thus sought
bifurcation, arguing its counterclaims should be tried to a
jury first, followed by a bench trial on Epic’s claims. Epic
argued for a jury trial on its antitrust claims based on
Google’s implied consent, Epic’s reliance on Google’s
earlier representations regarding a jury trial, how “factually
intertwined” the antitrust claims were with the jury-triable
counterclaims, and the prejudice Epic would face in altering
its “ongoing preparation of its case and witnesses” at the last
minute. On November 2, 2023, the district court denied
Google’s request for bifurcation.
The jury trial began on November 6, 2023. The jury
heard evidence regarding both Epic’s antitrust claims and
Google’s counterclaims. However, during the final stretch
of trial, the parties stipulated that Epic had violated the DDA
agreement with the Play Store by incorporating its own
payment solution into Fortnite during “Project Liberty” and
therefore Epic owed “$398,931.23 in fees that Google”
would otherwise have received. Thus, when instructed by
the district court on December 11, the jury was told not to
consider the counterclaims. On August 19, 2024, long after
the trial had concluded, Epic agreed to pay Google to resolve
the counterclaims.
B. The District Court Had Discretion to Deny the
Motion to Bifurcate
Because Google’s counterclaims were headed to the
jury, but Google wanted Epic’s claims and defenses tried to
the bench, Google’s Statement on a Non-Jury Trial is best
construed as a motion to bifurcate. In pressing for a
bifurcated trial, Google urged that a jury trial on Epic’s
antitrust claims was improper because Google had
28 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
withdrawn consent to a jury on those claims. That argument
runs into several roadblocks due to the intersection of three
federal rules of civil procedure: Rule 38(b)—Right to a Jury
Trial; Rule 39—Trial by Jury or by the Court; and Rule
42(b)—Consolidation; Separate Trials. Ultimately, under
the circumstances here, Google’s demand for a bench trial
fails because its claims are so factually intertwined with
Epic’s equitable claims.
Under Rule 38(b), a jury trial demand may be made “[o]n
any issue triable of right by a jury.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 38(b).
At the outset of the case, Google made a proper jury demand
on its counterclaims under Rule 38. The counterclaims
sought damages for alleged breach of contract, making them
quintessential legal claims triggering the right to a jury. See
Dairy Queen, Inc. v. Wood, 369 U.S. 469, 477‒78 (1962).
About six months before trial, the parties jointly proposed
that all the plaintiffs’ federal claims and Google’s
counterclaims be tried to the same jury. Both Epic and
Google reiterated that position in the pretrial conference, as
reflected in the court’s October 20 pretrial order. That order
confirmed a jury trial and deadlines for submission of jury
instructions.
Having made a proper jury demand under Rule 38(b),
Google was bound by the strictures of the rule. Rule 38(d)
provides that such a demand “may be withdrawn only if the
parties consent.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 38(d) (emphasis added).
But here there was no consent. Although Google sought at
the last minute to withdraw its demand for a jury and try its
counterclaims to the bench, Epic was within its rights under
Rule 38(d) to decline to consent to this change.
Though Google emphasizes that it withdrew its consent
to a jury trial on Epic’s antitrust claims, its counterclaims
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 29
against Epic for damages remained subject to the earlier jury
demand. Importantly, the operative question under the
federal rules is whether a jury trial has been demanded for a
particular issue. Fed. R. Civ. P. 38(b) (“issue triable of right
by a jury”), (c) (“may specify the issues”), 39(a) (“all issues
so demanded”), (b) (“jury trial on any issue”), (c) (“try any
issue by a jury”). Although Rule 39(a) suggests that, once a
jury demand is made, the entire action is to be docketed as a
“jury action,” it also clarifies that a jury trial will be held on
the “issues so demanded,” and that the court can decline a
jury demand as to any issues on which it finds there is no
right to a jury on “some or all of th[e] issues.” Fed. R. Civ.
P. 39(a); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 39(b) (providing that even
where a jury demand is not made, the court may “order a jury
trial on any issue for which a jury might have been
demanded”). Holistically, the civil rules implement the
constitutional right to jury trial on a claim-by-claim basis.
See Fed. R. Civ. P. 38 advisory committee’s note to 1937
amendment (stating Rules 38 and 39 preserve the Seventh
Amendment right to a jury). 8
8
Google’s citation to cases stating a party can unilaterally withdraw its
consent to a jury trial under Rule 39(c)(2)—which assumes an action not
triable of right by a jury—is inapposite, given Google’s jury demand on
the issues underlying both its counterclaims and Epic’s antitrust claims.
Additionally, in each of the cases cited by Google, by the time of trial,
all that remained were equitable issues. See FN Herstal SA v. Clyde
Armory Inc., 838 F.3d 1071, 1089 (11th Cir. 2016) (“When no right to a
jury trial exists and where no prejudice will result, a party may
unilaterally withdraw its consent to a jury trial.”); Kramer v. Banc of Am.
Sec., LLC, 355 F.3d 961, 968 (7th Cir. 2004) (allowing a defendant to
withdraw consent when there was no right to jury trial); CBS Broad., Inc.
v. EchoStar Commc’ns Corp., 450 F.3d 505, 517 n.25 (11th Cir. 2006)
(concluding it was not reversible error to strike a jury trial demand days
30 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
Confronted with a jury demand on the counterclaims,
which presented issues closely intertwined with Epic’s
antitrust claims, the district court faced a choice about how
to proceed. And its decision is reviewed in part for its
conformity to the “usual practice” under the federal rules, a
principle recently reiterated by the Supreme Court: “when a
factual dispute is intertwined with the merits of a claim that
falls under the Seventh Amendment, that dispute should go
to a jury.” Perttu v. Richards, 605 U.S. ----, No. 23-1324,
2025 WL 1698783, at *6 (U.S. June 18, 2025). Addressing
an affirmative defense “intertwined” with the merits, the
Court harkened back to Dairy Queen, Inc., in which “the
district judge erred in refusing . . . [a] demand for a trial by
jury” where the plaintiff brought legal and equitable claims
based on “common” “factual issues.” 369 U.S. 469, 479
(1962). As the Court held in Beacon Theaters, the right to
have a jury decide legal issues cannot be compromised by a
court first deciding equitable issues, absent extraordinary
circumstances. 359 U.S. 500, 510 (1959). This principle is
salient to our reading of the federal rules and of the district
court’s decision here to follow “the usual practice of the
federal courts in cases of intertwinement” and “send
common issues to the jury.” Perttu, 2025 WL 1698783, at
*10.
This was a classic case of intertwinement. The factual
issues underlying Google’s legal counterclaims overlapped
and intertwined extensively with the factual issues
underlying Epic’s equitable antitrust claims. Google itself
before trial where the plaintiffs sought purely equitable relief and no
legal claims remained in the case). That was not the posture here, where
there were equitable claims, legal claims, and a jury trial demand on
factual issues underlying both sets of claims.
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 31
had previously taken the position that it would “present
much of the same evidence” on its counterclaims as it would
in “defending against Plaintiffs’ antitrust case.” This
evidence included Google’s justifications for requiring the
use of Google Play Billing for all developers offering apps
on the Play Store, as well as the “trust and safety concerns”
motivating “the notifications and consent screens that are
displayed when users attempt to” directly download apps
“rather than download them from an app store.” Google
argued that its counterclaims turned on the same facts
regarding in-app billing and app-distribution that were the
underpinning of Epic’s antitrust claims. In Google’s words,
“the factual overlap between the counterclaim evidence and
the antitrust claims” was “extensive.”
Most prominently, Epic’s illegality defense to Google’s
counterclaims centered on the issues of whether Google’s
contracts had violated the antitrust laws and whether Google
had sufficient procompetitive justifications for its conduct.
These same issues were at the core of Epic’s antitrust claims.
The district court’s decision thus fully conformed with the
“usual practice” outlined in Perttu and Dairy Queen.
Again, the district court was thus presented with a
decision on the eve of trial: to bifurcate and hold two trials—
deciding in a bench trial those issues that were not jury-
demanded—or send Epic’s antitrust claims together with
Google’s counterclaims to the jury. (Despite Google’s
opposition to a jury hearing Epic’s antitrust claims, Google
never asked for the jury to be advisory only—under Rule
39(c)(1)—to address its concern: it was bifurcation or bust.)
Rule 42(b) permits, but does not require, separate trials
“[f]or convenience, to avoid prejudice, or to expedite and
economize.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 42(b). It has long been the case
32 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
that while “[t]he jury and nonjury issues may be tried
separately . . . . that is not required . . . . The matter is within
the trial court’s discretion as long as the order of trial is
arranged so that it preserves the jury right on the jury triable
issues.” Wright & Miller, Fed. Prac. & Proc. § 2337; see
also Beacon Theatres, 359 U.S. at 508‒10 (noting the trial
court’s discretion to arrange cases so long as the jury right is
preserved); Ammesmaki v. Interlake S. S. Co., 342 F.2d 627,
631 (7th Cir. 1965) (“A single trial tends to lessen delay,
expense, and inconvenience. The granting of separate trials
rests in the discretion of the trial judge. Rule 42(b) obviously
is not mandatory. For this reason [defendant] cannot now be
heard to complain about the district court’s denial of the
motion for separate trials.”). By sending all the issues to a
jury, the district court ensured that no jury right was
jeopardized—and simultaneously managed the trial in the
spirit of economy.
Trial bifurcation is a question soundly within the district
court’s judgment: “We review for abuse of discretion the
district court’s rulings on whether to bifurcate a trial,” and
“we usually affirm a trial judge’s decision.” Huizar v. City
of Anaheim (Estate of Diaz), 840 F.3d 592, 601 (9th Cir.
2016) (citation omitted). The district court was well within
its discretion to deny bifurcation because of the overlap in
factual disputes raised by the counterclaims and antitrust
claims explained above. The court’s decision is supported
by Google’s own representations. In its earlier opposition to
bifurcation, Google argued that Match and Epic failed to
“carry their burden to show that bifurcation would promote
efficiency.” The district court agreed with Google that
bifurcation was unwarranted and thus found it “particularly
significant” that on the eve of trial Google made a complete
about-face to argue for bifurcation, after having “expressly
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 33
represented to the Court that the facts underlying plaintiffs’
antitrust claims and Google’s counterclaims overlap in
substantial measure” only a few months before. Google
never explains what facts changed to suddenly invert the
equation and render bifurcation most efficient. Fed. R. Civ.
P. 42(b) (allowing bifurcation “to expedite and economize”).
And Google would be hard pressed to offer a credible
justification: the focus of the antitrust claims and Epic’s
illegality defense to the counterclaims centered on many of
the same facts and arguments.
By the time of trial, the litigation had long proceeded on
the understanding that a single trial would take place, to
which both Epic and Google had explicitly agreed. And the
district court declined to conduct separate proceedings on the
parties’ claims because it concluded that Google did not
effectively withdraw its prior consent to a jury trial on Epic’s
equitable claims. We do not need to address this additional
withdrawal-of-consent issue. The district court’s ultimate
decision was consistent with “the usual practice of the
federal courts in cases of intertwinement.” Perttu, 2025 WL
1698783, at *10. For that reason, we conclude that the
district court did not abuse its broad discretion in denying
Google’s request to bifurcate.
III. The District Court Did Not Err in Instructing the
Jury
A. A Jury Instruction on Single-Brand Aftermarkets
Was Not Warranted
This case was never framed by either party as involving
single-brand aftermarkets. So, it is no surprise that the
district court declined to instruct the jury on this principle
when Google raised it well into trial. Although we review
de novo whether a jury instruction accurately states the law,
34 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
“whether an instruction should be given in the first place
depends on the theories and evidence presented at trial”
which “is mostly a factual inquiry” that “we typically review
. . . for abuse of discretion.” United States v. Heredia, 483
F.3d 913, 921 (9th Cir. 2007). Under either standard, the
district court did not err in declining to give the proposed
instruction.
A single-brand aftermarket is a market in which a
consumer is “locked in” with a single brand and “demand for
a good is entirely dependent on the prior purchase of a
durable good in a foremarket.” Apple, 67 F.4th at 976
(emphasis removed). The seminal example comes from
Kodak, where once customers purchased Kodak
photocopiers or other equipment in the foremarket, they
were “locked in” to an aftermarket of Kodak parts and
servicing. 504 U.S. at 476.
Google requested a jury instruction explaining the
burdens a plaintiff must carry 9 to prove a single-brand
aftermarket. But a single-brand aftermarket theory was not
presented at trial. Not only did Epic never argue for single-
brand aftermarkets, but Google also never framed the market
this way. Instead, Google’s expert testified, “what this
market is about is that app developers and app users want
their . . . digital interactions[] to go well.” As the district
court pointed out, “[n]obody in this case . . . has said a word
about it, including [Google’s] own experts . . . none of your
9
“[T]o establish a single-brand aftermarket, a plaintiff must show:
(1) the challenged aftermarket restrictions are ‘not generally known’
when consumers make their foremarket purchase; (2) ‘significant’
information costs prevent accurate life-cycle pricing; (3) ‘significant’
monetary or non-monetary switching costs exist; and (4) general market-
definition principles regarding cross-elasticity of demand do not
undermine the proposed single-brand market.” Apple, 67 F.4th at 977.
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 35
experts . . . said a peep about a proposed relevant market
being based on a for[e]-market and after-market theory.”
Because that theory lacks a “foundation in the evidence,”
Google was not entitled to the instruction. Heredia, 483
F.3d at 922. It was also “within the district court’s discretion
to refuse to give the requested instruction because the
instruction could have confused the jury.” Cascade Health
Sols. v. PeaceHealth, 515 F.3d 883, 917 (9th Cir. 2008).
The same evidentiary void sinks the proposed instruction
under de novo review. Regardless of the parties’ framing or
terminology, the facts presented at trial do not meet the legal
definition of a single-brand aftermarket so as to warrant
Google’s proposed instruction. The foremarket of durable
goods in this case would be the market for smartphones that
run the Android operating system. The “undisputed
evidence showed at trial” that these durable goods “are
manufactured by many companies, including Google,
Samsung, Motorola, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and other OEMs.”
Multiple brands are also at play in the aftermarkets for
app distribution and in-app payments on Android-
compatible smartphones. The district court summarized that
“[s]ubstantial evidence was presented at trial that multiple
Android app stores can be, and on occasion have been,
available to consumers.” Indeed, “Google’s efforts to
suppress rival app stores” like Samsung’s Galaxy Store, and
maintain Play Store dominance, were a focal point during
trial. Because Google licenses the Android operating system
directly to OEMs rather than consumers, and because Play
Store alternatives exist for Android app distribution and in-
app payments, the reality is that consumers might not
transact with Google in either the foremarket or aftermarket,
making it difficult to argue that they are “locked in” to that
brand.
36 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
By contrast, Apple’s vertical integration made it a strong
candidate for a single-brand aftermarket theory, as Epic
explicitly argued in the Apple litigation. 67 F.4th at 978.
Consumers using iOS have necessarily purchased an Apple
product (i.e., iPhone) from Apple and are then locked into a
“walled garden” with Apple’s App Store. In that litigation,
however, Epic failed to meet the burden imposed on
plaintiffs asserting a single-brand aftermarket, including
proving that consumers were unaware of aftermarket
restrictions. Id. at 980–81. Google now argues for imposing
those same burdens here in hopes of receiving the same
result, but we are comparing Apple to oranges: Epic never
argued for a single-brand Google aftermarket, nor does
Android operate the same way as Apple.
Advocating for single-brand aftermarkets is another
attempt by Google to flatten the entire Android ecosystem
into one brand that competes against one other brand—
Apple. But the crux of this case is Google’s anticompetitive
conduct vis-à-vis many different brands within the Android
ecosystem. Given that the markets for Android app
distribution and in-app payment systems are not single-
brand aftermarkets, and no such theory was proposed by
either party during trial, the district court did not err in
denying Google’s request for a single-brand aftermarket
instruction.
B. The Rule of Reason Does Not Require
Consideration of Procompetitive Benefits Across
Markets
In its effort to cast this case as a Google-versus-Apple
struggle for market share, Google tries to sidestep the focus
of the case presented to the jury, namely that Google
improperly monopolized and restrained trade within the
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 37
Android app markets. This theme resurfaces in another jury
instruction dispute. It has long been understood that “the
Rule of Reason is the presumptive mode of analysis” for
both Section 1 and Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Irving
Scher & Scott Martin, Antitrust Adviser § 2:12 (5th ed.
2023). The rule requires the plaintiff to first show the
challenged conduct had an adverse effect on competition and
then considers whether any procompetitive benefits are
outweighed by anticompetitive effects. Id. Google argues
that the jury instruction for Rule of Reason Step 2
improperly limited the jury’s consideration of
procompetitive benefits of the challenged conduct to the
“relevant market,” instead of allowing the jury to also
consider related markets. 10 Yet again, Google’s concern is
that its competition with Apple should have been a focus for
the jury, despite Epic defining Android-only markets.
Specifically at issue is an instruction directed only to the
Section 2 Sherman Act (monopolization) claim. If the jury
determined at Step 1 of the Rule of Reason that Epic proved
Google’s conduct caused substantial harm to competition in
a relevant market, then the jury should decide “whether
Google has justified its conduct by proving that its conduct
was reasonably necessary to achieve competitive benefits for
consumers in that relevant market.” We review de novo
whether that jury instruction accurately states the law.
Spencer v. Peters, 857 F.3d 789, 797 (9th Cir. 2017)
10
Google also argues the instructions improperly allowed the jury to
balance pro- and anticompetitive effects at Step 3 of the Rule of Reason,
rather than proceeding to a fourth Step. But “Google acknowledges that
[our precedent in Apple] forecloses this argument before [this] panel.”
See also 67 F.4th at 993–94 (“Supreme Court precedent neither requires
a fourth step nor disavows it” and the Rule of Reason steps are not a “rote
checklist.”). The district court did not err in its balancing instruction.
38 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
(quoting Wilkerson v. Wheeler, 772 F.3d 834, 838 (9th Cir.
2014)).
To begin, it is not settled case law that a jury is required
to consider cross-market procompetitive benefits when
conducting Rule of Reason analysis. In Apple we concluded
that “[t]he Supreme Court’s precedent on this issue is not
clear,” citing cases going both ways, and noting that “[o]ur
court’s precedent is similar” and “we have never expressly
confronted this issue.” 67 F.4th at 989. Google itself
acknowledges that “the Supreme Court has recently
indicated that the question [of cross-market procompetitive
justifications] remains open,” citing National Collegiate
Athletic Association v. Alston, 594 U.S. 69, 87 (2021), where
the Court “express[ed] no views” on the issue. Id. Because
consideration of cross-market competitive benefits is an
open question and not an established legal requirement, it
was not error for the district court to exclude it from the jury
instruction.
In any event, should the Supreme Court ultimately
impose such a rule, any error in the instruction was harmless.
See Swinton v. Potomac Corp., 270 F.3d 794, 805–06 (9th
Cir. 2001) (holding that reversal is not warranted where “the
error is more probably than not harmless.”) (citation
omitted). Throughout trial, Google presented the position
that its restrictive practices were justified by its competitive
battle with Apple. The Section 1 Sherman Act (restraint of
trade) instruction imposed no limit on procompetitive
considerations in other markets. It would be illogical to
divine that the jury would have viewed the monopolization
claim differently than it viewed the restraint-of-trade claim,
on which the jury found against Google. See FTC v.
Qualcomm Inc., 969 F.3d 974, 991 (9th Cir. 2020) (Rule of
Reason analysis “essentially the same” for the two claims).
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 39
Jury instructions must be reviewed “as a whole.” Skidmore
v. Led Zeppelin, 952 F.3d 1051, 1065 (9th Cir. 2020) (en
banc). Under that standard, given the jury’s verdict and the
strength of the evidence, any claimed error was harmless.
IV. The Permanent Injunction Is Valid
Following the jury’s verdict on December 8, 2023, the
district court commenced post-trial proceedings that allowed
each side “a virtually unlimited opportunity to present its
views about the scope and content of an injunction.” Epic
submitted a proposed injunction; Google responded with its
objections; and the court extensively queried both parties
and their many fact and expert witnesses. After two
evidentiary hearings, twenty written submissions from the
parties, and vigorous argument by counsel, the court entered
a permanent injunction and issued findings of fact and
conclusions of law in a separate order, which was
supplemented by the court’s earlier denial of Google’s
JMOL motion.
A. The Injunction’s Provisions
The injunction balances Epic’s proposals to remedy the
antitrust violations against Google’s concerns about
overbreadth, security, and implementation. Adopting a
nationwide scope and halving Epic’s proposed six-year
timeline to a period of three years, the injunction
commenced on November 1, 2024, and extends for three
years to November 1, 2027. 11
11
Only one of the injunction’s provisions—prohibiting Google from
paying smartphone manufacturers not to preinstall Play Store
competitors on their devices—has taken effect. All other provisions were
stayed pending appeal.
40 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
The court’s order began by prohibiting anticompetitive
arrangements that insulated the Play Store and Google Play
Billing from competition. The injunction prohibits Google
from sharing Play Store revenue with actual or prospective
entrants in the Android app-distribution market, just as
Google earlier sought to compensate Samsung with “Project
Banyan” to “[p]revent unnecessary competition” between
the Samsung Galaxy Store and Play Store. The injunction
next prohibits Google from engaging counterparties in
restrictive deals that condition payment or access to the Play
Store on (1) an agreement to launch apps first or exclusively
on the Play Store, or (2) an agreement to preinstall the Play
Store and not any other app store in any specific location on
an Android smartphone. Finally, the injunction prohibits
Google from continuing to require Google Play Billing for
all apps distributed on the Play Store. The district court
explained that these remedies “closely track the evidence of
anticompetitive conduct at trial.” On appeal, Google does
not directly challenge these prohibitions on anticompetitive
arrangements, though it folds them into its broader attacks
on the factual findings and Epic’s standing to seek a
nationwide injunction.
In addition to these restrictions on Google’s prior
anticompetitive conduct, the injunction also seeks to restore
competition in the Android app-distribution market with the
catalog-access and app-store-distribution remedies. The
catalog-access remedy requires Google to “permit third-
party Android app stores to access the Google Play Store’s
catalog of apps,” so that competing app stores can offer users
a comparable library of software products. On the other side
of the market, the app-store-distribution remedy forbids
Google from banning “third-party Android app distribution
platforms or stores through the Google Play Store,” so that
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 41
the same platforms can access Android smartphone users
who are currently accustomed to downloading all their apps
through the Play Store. Together these provisions allow
other app stores to compete in this two-sided market by
letting them offer the apps and reach the users on the Play
Store platform. The district court gave Google an eight-
month timeline to develop the systems needed to comply
with both the catalog-access and app-store-distribution
remedies. Responding to Google’s concerns about the safety
of products offered on the Play Store, the injunction permits
Google to adopt “reasonable measures” and charge “a
reasonable fee . . . based on Google’s actual costs” to ensure
user security and privacy.
Finally, anticipating disputes over implementation, the
court ordered the formation of a three-person Technical
Committee composed of one member selected by Epic,
another member selected by Google, and a third member
selected by those two representatives. In the event of a
disagreement, Google bears the burden of showing that its
technical requirements are “strictly necessary to achieve
safety and security for users and developers.” The district
court maintains control, since any unresolved issues are to
be referred to the court. We uphold the injunction in full.
B. The District Court Had Broad Discretion to Craft
the Antitrust Injunction
Google raises a number of objections to the injunction.
“Because ‘[a] district court’s decision to grant a permanent
injunction involves factual, legal, and discretionary
components,’ we evaluate such a decision under three
different standards of review.” Scott v. Pasadena Unified
Sch. Dist., 306 F.3d 646, 653 (9th Cir. 2002) (citation
omitted). “[W]e review factual findings for clear error, legal
42 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
conclusions de novo, and the scope of the injunction for
abuse of discretion.” United States v. Wash., 853 F.3d 946,
962 (9th Cir. 2017) (citing id.).
Equitable relief in private antitrust actions is governed
by Section 16 of the Clayton Act, which grants that “[a]ny
person, firm, corporation, or association shall be entitled to
. . . injunctive relief . . . against threatened loss or damage by
a violation of the antitrust laws.” 15 U.S.C. § 26. Though
“caution is key,” Alston, 594 U.S. at 106, the Supreme Court
has repeatedly endorsed the principle that district courts are
“clothed with ‘large discretion’ to fit the decree to the special
needs of the individual case”—not just to “unfetter a market
from anticompetitive conduct,” but also to “pry open to
competition a market that has been closed by defendants’
illegal restraints.” Ford Motor Co. v. United States, 405 U.S.
562, 573, 577–78 (1972) (cleaned up). These equitable
powers animate Section 16, because “the purpose of giving
private parties . . . injunctive remedies was not merely to
provide private relief, but was to serve as well the high
purpose of enforcing the antitrust laws.” Zenith Radio Corp.
v. Hazeltine Rsch., Inc., 395 U.S. 100, 130–31 (1969). As a
result, Epic “need only demonstrate a significant threat of
injury from an impending violation of the antitrust laws or
from a contemporary violation likely to continue or recur,”
and the district court may “restrain acts which are of the
same type or class as unlawful acts which the court has found
to have been committed or whose commission in the future
unless enjoined, may fairly be anticipated from the
defendant’s conduct in the past.” Id. at 130, 132 (citation
omitted).
Echoing the Supreme Court’s guidance, we recently
concluded that where a defendant has been found to violate
federal antitrust laws, “the available injunctive relief is
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 43
broad, including to ‘terminate the illegal monopoly, deny to
the defendant the fruits of its statutory violation, and ensure
that there remain no practices likely to result in
monopolization in the future.’” Optronic Techs., Inc. v.
Ningbo Sunny Elec. Co., 20 F.4th 466, 486 (9th Cir. 2021)
(citation omitted). Enacting extensive Section 16 relief
requires a “clear indication of a significant causal connection
between the conduct enjoined or mandated and the violation
found.” Optronic, 20 F.4th at 486 (cleaned up); 3 Phillip E.
Areeda & Herbert Hovenkamp, Antitrust Law ¶ 653b, at 92
(1996). Importantly, “the reviewing court only asks if the
relief is a reasonable method of eliminating the
consequences of the illegal conduct.” Optronic, 20 F.4th at
486 (cleaned up).
We start our analysis with Google’s challenges to the
two remedies directed at unwinding the consequences of
Google’s anticompetitive conduct: catalog access and app-
store distribution. As part of our discussion of these
remedies, we also address Google’s objections to the
formation of the Technical Committee. Then, we proceed to
Google’s broader efforts to vacate the entire injunction and
contest its nationwide effect. 12 In recognition of the
discretion historically afforded to the entry of equitable
12
Beyond contesting the injunction’s factual basis, geographic scope,
and Epic’s Article III standing, Google does not challenge the district
court’s prohibitions on its prior anticompetitive arrangements. Because
the district court clearly outlined its factual and legal bases for
concluding that anticompetitive conduct had occurred and acted within
its authority to “restrain acts which are of the same type or class as
unlawful acts which the court has found to have been committed,” we
conclude that those measures survive review. Zenith Radio, 395 U.S. at
132.
44 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
antitrust remedies, we conclude that the injunction should be
affirmed.
C. Catalog Access
We begin with the catalog-access approach to restoring
competition in Android app distribution. We agree with the
FTC and DOJ that our review must account for “the
particular characteristics of digital markets, which can allow
monopolists that achieved or maintained dominance through
exclusionary conduct to perpetuate entry barriers and
maintain monopoly power long after that conduct has
stopped.” Given these realities, we recognize the district
court’s “large discretion” to meet the “special needs” of the
case, which must include the nature of the market. Ford
Motor, 405 U.S. at 573, 577–78 (cleaned up).
The district court repeatedly emphasized that the
catalog-access remedy is intended to ameliorate
consequences “intertwined with the network effects” that
Google has enjoyed as a monopolist in a two-sided platform
market. Specifically, the court cited evidence about the Play
Store’s advantaged position between a critical mass of app
developers and a critical mass of app users, quoting directly
from Google’s internal presentations that “Users come to
Play because we have by far the most compelling catalog of
apps/games”; “Developers come to Play because that’s
where the users are”; and even formidable competitors like
“Amazon will struggle to break those network effects.’” As
the district court explained, the catalog-access remedy seeks
to “overcome” the Play Store’s illegally amplified network
effects by “giv[ing] rival stores a fair opportunity to establish
themselves” with a competitive catalog of software
applications. The provision temporarily opens up the
Android app-distribution market, by giving app stores a
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 45
three-year window to access the singular catalog that Google
accumulated and leveraged during the Play Store’s
dominance of the market. As the district court put it, “[a]ll
that the catalog access does is level the playing field for a
discrete period of time so that rival app stores have a fighting
chance of getting off the ground.”
Google objects to the catalog-access provision on the
grounds that (1) it illegally imposes a duty-to-deal
requirement “to design new products and services tailor-
made for [Google’s] competitors”; and (2) it imposes that
requirement without identifying a “significant causal
connection” to Google’s anticompetitive conduct.
Neither of these challenges carries the day, and together
they misconstrue our longstanding deferential approach to
equitable antitrust remedies. In light of the digital two-sided
market at issue, the remedy represents “a reasonable method
of eliminating the consequences of [Google’s] illegal
conduct” that we must affirm as the reviewing court.
Optronic, 20 F.4th at 486 (quoting Nat’l Soc’y of Pro. Eng’rs
v. United States, 435 U.S. 679, 698 (1978)).
1. No Impermissible Duty to Deal
To start, it is not true that courts cannot and have never
compelled antitrust defendants to deal with rivals,
notwithstanding Google’s attempt to characterize catalog
access as an impermissible “duty to deal.” Google’s reliance
on the Supreme Court’s Trinko decision for the proposition
that “forced sharing” creates “tension with the underlying
purpose of antitrust law” is misplaced. Verizon Commc’ns.
Inc. v. Law Off. of Curtis v. Trinko, LLP, 540 U.S. 398, 407–
08 (2004). That case addressed the question of whether a
unilateral refusal to deal with rivals violates Section 2 of the
Sherman Act—not the legality of compelling a defendant
46 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
already found liable under that statute to deal with its
competitors. We accept Trinko’s lesson that a single entity’s
decision not to deal with competitors can be legal under the
Sherman Act, but it is well established that antitrust remedies
can and often must proscribe otherwise lawful conduct to
unwind and further prevent violators’ anticompetitive
activity. See, e.g., Nat’l Soc’y of Pro. Eng’rs, 435 U.S. at
697–98 (“In fashioning a remedy, the District Court may, of
course, consider the fact that its injunction may impinge
upon rights that would otherwise be constitutionally
protected, but those protections do not prevent it from
remedying the antitrust violations.”). No wonder, then, that
the Court in Ford Motor affirmed an order forcing Ford not
only to divest an illegally acquired spark-plug manufacturer,
but thereafter to “purchase one-half of its total annual
requirement of spark plugs from the divested plant.” 405
U.S. at 572. More recently, in Optronic, we also upheld an
order requiring a telescope manufacturer to service a
designer and marketer of telescopes on non-discriminatory
terms. 20 F.4th at 486–87. These cases underscore that,
after establishing liability, the district court had within its
basket of remedial powers the authority to require Google to
deal with parties harmed by its anticompetitive conduct,
including its competitors.
Google tries to differentiate these previously upheld
injunctions by claiming that the district court improperly
ordered Google to “design new products” (emphasis added),
rather than “sell existing products.” As a practical matter,
this argument mischaracterizes what exactly the catalog-
access remedy asks Google to do—which is to allow app-
store developers to access existing data and data-processing
resources that, until now, Google restricted the developers
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 47
from accessing. 13 Google is not being asked to develop a
new product or service from scratch. Notwithstanding its
complaints about the burden of implementing the catalog-
access remedy—i.e., in having “to create entirely new
infrastructure to serve as the backend administrator for any
number of third-party app stores”—the record confirms that
Google can make the existing Play Store’s app catalog
available to other app stores at a cost of under $1 million, by
using existing metadata servers and technical procedures. 14
As Epic’s expert explained, “Google already has the catalog
data on hand stored in an accessible server.” Google’s
expert not only agreed with the practicability of modifying
these systems—“I’m not disputing the feasibility”—but also
offered a six-to-nine-month estimate for implementation, in
keeping with the injunction’s eight-month timeline.
13
Google’s purported distinction between having to offer “existing” and
“new” services appears to reflect the distinction between prohibitory
injunctions (seeking to preserve the status quo) and mandatory
injunctions (requiring parties to perform certain acts). But the Supreme
Court has expressly declined to read such a distinction into the scope of
equitable relief available under Section 16. Cal. v. Am. Stores Co., 495
U.S. 271, 279–84 (1990) (observing that prior decisions have “upheld
injunctions issued pursuant to § 16 regardless of whether they were
mandatory or prohibitory in character”). That the district court simply
required Google to configure its services differently is a permissible
form of relief. Id. at 283 (citing Silver v. N.Y. Stock Exch., 373 U.S. 341,
345, 365 (1963) (reinstating judgment compelling defendants to install
private wire connections)).
14
The court extensively questioned experts from both parties about the
so-called “Alley Oop” process that Google has already made available
to select developers. That scalable process “embed[s] a button that will
enable the installation of an app from the Play Store” in a way that could
conform to the demands of the catalog-access remedy. Google’s expert
did not contest that “they already have mechanisms to put that in place.”
48 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
2. Significant Causal Connection
Google also objects that the district court committed a
legal error by failing to make a specific finding that “the
company’s competitive advantage—here, network effects—
would have existed even without the anticompetitive
conduct.” Google highlights its first-mover status in the
Android app-distribution market to claim that some of the
Play Store’s network effects must owe to “that lawful
advantage,” rather than any illegal conduct. Neither we nor
the district court discount this argument. Nonetheless, it
fails.
First, initial innovation notwithstanding, a first mover is
“not entitled to maintain and magnify” the relevant network
effects by entrenching its dominance through
anticompetitive conduct.
Second, Google misconstrues the responsibility of the
district court. The district court was obligated to ensure only
that the conduct enjoined or mandated by the catalog-access
provision (here, Google’s technical and contractual
exclusion of other app-store developers from the Play Store)
had a significant causal connection to “the violation found”
(here, the creation or maintenance of a monopoly).
Optronic, 20 F.4th at 486 (emphasis added) (quoting United
States v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d 34, 105 (D.C. Cir. 2001).
The district court fulfilled that obligation when it stated:
“[T]he question is whether Google engaged in
anticompetitive conduct that had the consequence of
entrenching and maintaining its monopoly power in a two-
sided market. The jury answered that question in the
affirmative.” Optronic does not require that an injunction
only touch the consequences of a defendant’s conduct.
Rather, it asks for a “reasonable method” of redressing
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 49
problems with a “significant causal connection to that
conduct.” Id. As the district court pointed out, Google is
barking up the wrong tree.
Likewise, Google’s objection that the catalog access
provision lacks a significant causal nexus falls short. The
court plainly stated: “Google unfairly enhanced its network
effects in a way that would not have happened but for its
anticompetitive conduct.” This is an unambiguous finding
of a “significant causal connection” between Google’s
illegal conduct and the strength of the network effects
benefiting Google in the app-distribution market. Id. at 486
(citation omitted).
Google does not argue that the district court clearly erred
in its factual findings on causation. For good reason. The
record was replete with evidence that Google’s
anticompetitive conduct entrenched its dominance, causing
the Play Store to benefit from network effects. The district
court established that, as Google “erect[ed] barriers to
insulate the Play Store from competition,” it did so with the
awareness that “to get more developers, Amazon needs more
users.” Google was specifically interested in preventing
Amazon from “break[ing] those network effects.” Its
anticompetitive conduct was forward-looking, with the
purpose—and ultimately the consequence, according to the
jury’s verdict—of preserving the market dominance that led
to those network effects. The court’s citations to Google’s
own internal communications illustrate how “benefits from
network effects” motivated and flowed from anticompetitive
activity “entrenching and maintaining” the Play Store’s
dominant position in a two-sided market. Far from a
“plainly weak” causal relationship, 3 Areeda & Hovenkamp,
Antitrust Law ¶ 653c4, at 97, the record demonstrates
substantial support for the district court’s finding that
50 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
Google’s anticompetitive conduct caused the creation or
maintenance of its monopoly power and “unfairly enhanced”
the relevant network effects.
Once the court established, based on the trial evidence,
that network effects were among the consequences of
Google’s anticompetitive conduct, the court was permitted
to shape relief targeted to those effects. Section 16
authorizes courts to “deny to the defendant the fruits of its
statutory violation.” Optronic, 20 F.4th at 486 (quoting
Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d at 103). The network effects that
resulted from Google’s entrenchment of the Play Store in the
two-sided app-distribution market are among those fruits.
Because the catalog-access remedy ultimately offers a
“reasonable method” of counteracting the Play Store’s
dominance and reducing the network effects it enjoys by
temporarily lowering barriers to entry, we uphold that
provision. Optronic, 20 F.4th at 486 (citation omitted).
D. App-Store Distribution
The district court’s injunction also restricts Google from
“prohibit[ing] the distribution of third-party Android app
distribution platforms or stores through the Google Play
Store,” in direct response to Google’s practice of freezing
other app stores out of the Play Store and barring them from
users. Google is still entitled to charge a “reasonable fee”
for any “reasonable measures” it takes to ensure that the app
stores distributed on its platform “are safe from a computer
systems and security standpoint, and do not offer illegal
goods or services . . . , or violate Google’s content
standards.”
Google raises the same two challenges here as it did with
respect to the catalogue-access provision—that the district
court exceeded its authority, and that it failed to make a
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 51
causation finding. For the same reasons discussed above, we
disagree with Google’s causation argument. And for many
of the same reasons as the catalog-access provision, we hold
that the app-store-distribution remedy was within the district
court’s authority.
In its discussion about Google’s “unfairly enhanced”
network effects, the district court laid bare how market
entrants faced hurdles on both ends of the two-sided market
for Android app distribution. The yin and yang of this
symbiotic relationship locked other app stores out of the Play
Store, while app developers and users were locked in.
Google knew that competitors would “struggle” not just
because “their catalog of apps/games is very limited,” but
also because “they don’t have users.” That is why Google
worked in various ways to keep users tied to the Play Store,
by making it difficult to download apps outside of the
platform and by engaging OEMs to install the Play Store as
the default app store on Android smartphones. It also
explains why the court sought to “undo the consequence of
Google’s ill-gotten gains” on that side of the market, by
giving competitors a chance to reach users now anchored to
the Play Store.
As the explanatory order put it, app-store distribution
“lower[s] the barriers for rival app stores to get onto users’
phones by enjoining Google from prohibiting the presence
of rival app stores in the Google Play Store.” The remedy
enables this intervention while still permitting Google to
charge a “reasonable fee” for any security measures that are
“comparable to the measures Google is currently taking for
apps proposed to be listed in the Google Play Store.” Taken
together, the district court’s approach represents a
“reasonable method of eliminating the consequences of
[Google’s] illegal conduct” on the user side of the Android
52 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
app-distribution market, just as the catalog-access remedy
did on the developer side. Optronic, 20 F.4th at 486 (quoting
Nat’l Soc’y of Pro. Eng’rs, 435 U.S. at 698). So again, we
affirm.
Google’s complaints about these “duties to deal” are
even less convincing here than in the context of the catalog-
access remedy. By ordering Google to allow rival app stores
from Amazon, Samsung, or any other competitor onto the
Play Store, the injunction only compels that Google treat
those software products the same way that it treats other
products already offered on the platform. “App stores are
themselves just a type of app,” as Epic notes, and some third-
party app stores were already carried on the Play Store
before Google updated its terms to have them excluded.
Though Google may decry the inconvenience of having to
design “new protocols” to address the security risks of
carrying app stores, its own expert conceded that Google
would be able to meet these difficulties with the same
technological criteria it uses for other third-party software
applications already on the Play Store.
Google offers an additional challenge to the app-store-
distribution remedy’s pricing clause, which provides:
“Google may require app developers and app store owners
to pay a reasonable fee” for its security procedures. Google
asks that we follow our decision in Image Technical Services
v. Eastman Kodak to modify the provision about “reasonable
prices” and require only “nondiscriminatory pricing.” 125
F.3d at 1195, 1225 (9th Cir. 1997). This argument is
unconvincing because there our intervention was motivated
by a concern about Kodak’s intellectual property assets and
its attendant “right to earn monopoly profits.” Id. Google
cannot explain why it is similarly “entitled” to charge
supracompetitive prices for security reviews. Id. While
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 53
Google seeks to transform Kodak into a “legal rule” that
prohibits “direct price administration,” it overlooks Kodak’s
recognition that pricing is “generally [i.e., not always]
considered beyond our function.” Id. (emphasis added).
Indeed, the Supreme Court has expressly approved
“reasonable” pricing restrictions in remedial orders. See,
e.g., United States v. Glaxo Grp. Ltd., 410 U.S. 52, 62 (1973)
(requiring defendant “to grant patent licenses at reasonable-
royalty rates”); Int’l Boxing Club of N.Y., Inc. v. United
States, 358 U.S. 242, 261, 255 (1959) (affirming a
“compulsory leasing provision” requiring defendants to
lease their premises for a “fair and reasonable” rental rate);
United States v. Nat’l Lead Co., 332 U.S. 319, 349–50
(1947) (affirming decree ordering defendants to grant patent
licenses for a “reasonable royalty,” reasoning, “that
conception is one that already has been recognized both by
Congress and by this Court”).
We conclude that the district court not only acted within
its discretion to mandate a “reasonable fee,” but also chose
the right price level to ensure the pro-competitive function
of the app-store distribution remedy. Whereas Kodak
determined that the modified, “nondiscriminatory pricing”
would work just as well to keep the defendant in that case
from harming competitors and charging exorbitant fees, here
that standard could still allow Google to keep third-party app
stores off the Play Store by charging them all the same
unreasonably high price. Id. at 1225. The FTC and DOJ
warn against this possibility in their amicus brief, where they
argue that the reasonable-fee provision “plainly prevents
Google from undermining the decree by charging rival app
stores exorbitant rates that could undermine their
competitiveness.” Google objects that it has “no established
history of [] abusing the pricing of [its security procedures]
54 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
to restrain trade,” but that does not answer the question
whether it could instrumentalize that price lever in the future,
when Google is enjoined from excluding third-party app
stores simply as a matter of policy. 15
The Supreme Court put this point bluntly: “The District
Court is not obliged to assume, contrary to common
experience, that a violator of the antitrust laws will
relinquish the fruits of [its] violation more completely than
the court requires.” Int’l Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U.S.
392, 400 (1947). As Epic explains, “Google has not been
and does not want to be in the business of carrying app stores
at all.” So now that the jury found Google liable for
restraining trade through other means, it falls squarely within
the district court’s discretion to “ensure that there remain no
practices likely to result in monopolization in the future.”
Optronic, 20 F.4th at 486 (citation omitted). Because that
discretion encompasses the power to craft “forward-
looking” restraints like the reasonable-fee provision, and
because that provision enhances the restorative and pro-
competitive effect of the app-store-distribution remedy
without causing undue harm to Google or its business, it
survives our review. Mass. v. Microsoft Corp., 373 F.3d
1199, 1215 (D.C. Cir. 2004).
E. Rule 65 Vagueness and the Technical Committee
We next consider whether the injunction meets the
procedural requirements of Rule 65(d), which sets out that
every injunctive order must: “(A) state the reasons why it
15
Google’s counsel was queried at oral argument and offered no
procompetitive reason why a non-discriminatory pricing restraint would
be workable, where a reasonable one would not. Oral Argument at
1:00:20 (No. 24-6256), ca9.uscourts.gov/media/video/?20250203/24-
6256/.
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 55
issued; (B) state its terms specifically; and (C) describe in
reasonable detail . . . the act or acts restrained or required.”
Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(d)(1). We follow the Supreme Court’s
guidance in considering whether the injunction provides
“fair and precisely drawn notice of what the injunction
actually prohibits.” Fortyune v. Am. Multi-Cinema, Inc., 364
F.3d 1075, 1087 (9th Cir. 2004) (emphasis removed)
(quoting Granny Goose Foods, Inc. v. Bhd. of Teamsters,
415 U.S. 423, 444 (1974)). However, and in keeping with
the statutory requirement for “reasonable detail,” we do not
set aside injunctive provisions “unless they are so vague that
they have no reasonably specific meaning.” United States v.
Holtzman, 762 F.2d 720, 726 (9th Cir. 1985). Here, on de
novo review, the district court’s injunction easily clears that
bar.
Google also invokes Rule 65 in objecting to the district
court’s decision to set up the framework for a Technical
Committee, contending that (1) these injunctive provisions
leave open too many questions about compliance, and (2) the
Technical Committee is an inappropriate mechanism for
clearing up those ambiguities. We disagree on both counts.
The district court not only used clear language to put Google
on notice of “what the injunction actually prohibits,”
Fortyune, 364 F.3d at 1087, but in the remedy also took
additional pains to establish a reasonably clear process for
“review[ing] disputes or issues relating to [] technology and
processes.”
1. Catalog Access and App-Store Distribution are
Clear Remedies
We attend first to the terms of the challenged remedies.
The catalog-access remedy states that “Google will permit
third-party Android app stores to access the Google Play
56 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
Store’s catalog of apps so that they may offer the Play Store
apps to users.” This language articulates the reason for the
order (i.e., so third-party app stores “may offer the Play Store
apps”) and explains in plain terms what Google is
“restrained or required” to do. Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(d)(1). For
those downloads that will be processed by Google Play,
Google must “permit users to complete the download” of
apps available only on the Play Store “on the same terms as”
if that download were made directly from the platform.
Google must “provide developers with a mechanism for
opting out of inclusion in catalog access for any particular
third-party Android app store.” And Google must develop
“the technology necessary to comply with this provision”
within eight months. Rather than identify any ambiguity
rendering the catalog-access provision “too vague to be
enforceable,” Del Webb Cmtys., Inc. v. Partington, 652 F.3d
1145, 1150 (9th Cir. 2011), Google points to outstanding
questions about app-store “eligibility criteria” and
technological implementation, such as “what metadata . . .
Google must make available” and “how often to refresh that
data.” These practical specifics go well beyond the
“reasonable detail” required by Rule 65(d), since the district
court need not “elucidate how to enforce the injunction” or
“provide [Google] with explicit instructions on the
appropriate means to accomplish this directive.” Fortyune,
364 F.3d at 1087. The injunction provides details that stem
from the evidence, and the district court cannot be expected
to give Google a cookbook on the specifics of complying
with the injunction. Were the court to take that approach,
Google would squawk that the injunction was too
overbearing.
The same necessary detail can also be found in the app-
store distribution remedy. That provision sets forth in clear
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 57
terms that “Google may not prohibit the distribution of third-
party Android app distribution platforms or stores through
the Google Play Store,” but allows Google to take
“reasonable measures to ensure that the platforms or stores,
and the apps they offer, are safe from a computer systems
and security standpoint.” Google objects that it does not
know which app stores fall within the scope of the order or
what “technical and content requirements” may be imposed.
But what is it about “third-party Android app distribution
platforms or stores” that Google doesn’t get? The parties
intimately understand what the injunction covers, and a
quick review of the remedial hearings reveals the backdrop
in excruciating detail. 16 Again, Google’s desire for extra
detail does not demonstrate that the app-store-distribution
remedy is missing so much information as to have no
“reasonably specific meaning.” Holtzman, 762 F.2d at 726
(citation omitted). The provision gives fair notice that
Google cannot turn away app-distribution platforms that
meet its technical requirements, and that those technical
requirements must be benchmarked against existing ones
(i.e., by making them “comparable to the measures Google
is currently taking for apps”). That level of “reasonable
16
The language that Google complains about in the app-store distribution
remedy actually reflects the district court’s concession to Google’s
position, where there was much discussion about whether technical
security procedures for third-party app stores should differ from those
already in place for other third-party apps. Epic pushed for consistency
between how Google vets Android app stores on and off the Play Store;
Google insisted, “we would want the level of safety for these third-party
app stores to be [] close to the Google Play safety.” The injunction
adopts Google’s stance by allowing “reasonable measures to ensure that
the platforms or stores, and the apps they offer, are safe,” so long as they
are “comparable to the measures Google is currently taking for apps.”
58 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
detail” meets the specificity requirements set forth by Rule
65(d).
2. The Technical Committee is Proper
The injunction’s directive to form a three-person
Technical Committee does nothing to compromise the
integrity of the catalog-access and app-store-distribution
remedies. The Technical Committee offers a helpful
resource to attend to the “nuts-and-bolts issues” that Google
raises in this challenge, which the district court identified as
too “granular” for the injunction and beyond its level of
technical expertise. The Technical Committee is hardly a
backstop for the injunction. It comports with federal courts’
long history of utilizing appointed experts and provides a
process to review and resolve inevitable disputes between
the parties—ideally without further need for judicial
intervention.
This arrangement is not at all uncommon in disputes that
demand a high degree of specialized knowledge, as this one
certainly does, and both we and our sister circuits have
sanctioned the appointment of technical advisors and special
masters. See, e.g., A&M Recs., Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 284
F.3d 1091, 1097 (9th Cir. 2002) (upholding injunction under
Rule 65 and deeming proper the district court’s use of a
technical advisor); Ass’n of Mexican-Am. Educators v. Cal.,
231 F.3d 572, 590 (9th Cir. 2000) (“In those rare cases in
which outside technical expertise would be helpful to a
district court, the court may appoint a technical advisor.”);
Chi. Bridge & Iron Co. v. FTC, 534 F.3d 410, 441 (5th Cir.
2008) (endorsing FTC divestment order that “carefully”
appointed a third-party monitor “to determine how assets
must be divided to effectuate the order and its general
remedial purpose”). One court reviewing the establishment
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 59
of such a committee observed that “the Government’s ability
to enforce the decree is clearly strengthened, not
diminished,” by that body. Microsoft Corp., 373 F.3d at
1244.
Google’s assertion that “no U.S. court has ever imposed
a technical committee by judicial fiat” is a fiction, as is its
suggestion that the district court’s Technical Committee
“violates not just Rule 65, but basic principles of Article III
adjudication.” The Supreme Court upheld a similar
arrangement in Besser Manufacturing Co. v. United States,
another monopolization case. 343 U.S. 444, 447–48 (1952).
There, against defendants’ objection that the injunction
“deprive[d] them of their property without due process,” the
Court affirmed the district court’s use of a committee to fix
royalty rates for patent licenses. Id. at 448. The committee
structure paralleled that of the Technical Committee here,
being composed of members selected by each party, plus an
additional member selected by those members. Id. What’s
more, just as the district court in that case retained its
authority to resolve any “deadlock,” id. at 449, the district
court has done so here by acknowledging that “[i]f the
Technical Committee cannot resolve a dispute or issue, a
party may ask the Court for a resolution.” 17 We are
confident that the district court has not abdicated its Article
III function, and we see no reason to depart from Besser’s
assessment that this kind of arrangement represents an
“entirely reasonable and fair” mechanism for dispute
resolution. Id. Nor does supplementing the injunction with
the Technical Committee undermine the sufficiency of the
17
The injunction also curtails the Technical Committee’s power to
“extend any deadline set in this order,” allowing only that it “may
recommend that the Court accept or deny a request to extend.”
60 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
catalog-access and app-store-distribution remedies under
Rule 65.
F. Sufficient Factual Findings Underlie the
Injunction
Having addressed the arguments targeted specifically at
the catalog-access and app-store-distribution remedies, we
turn to Google’s attempt to vacate the entire injunction.
Google disputes the factual findings underlying the remedy,
using that frame to gather various claims that the district
court: (1) failed to explain why it did not impose less
burdensome contractual restrictions; (2) declined to consider
Google’s settlement agreement with the States; and
(3) overlooked the security and intellectual property
interests of non-parties.
Before addressing each of these claims, we reiterate that
our standard of review for factual findings is clear error.
Wash., 853 F.3d at 962. We also add that there is little
precedent for this sort of factual-basis challenge, in that
injunctions have been modified or vacated for reasons
related to specific factual matters, but rarely due to
insufficient findings alone. 18 Here, though, there is no
oversight resulting in a “clear error of judgment.” La
Quinta, 762 F.3d at 879 (citation omitted). The district court
based its determinations on a vast record built throughout the
18
For example, in the trademark case La Quinta Worldwide LLC v.
Q.R.T.M., S.A.de C.V), we vacated an injunction after holding that a
factual omission “le[ft] us uncertain whether the district court considered
all relevant factors in assessing the balance of hardships.” 762 F.3d 867,
880 (9th Cir. 2014). There, the court failed to weigh a key consideration
related to the circumstances in which the parties would be able to
continue doing business under their names in the United States and
Mexico. Google points to no analogous absence of factfinding here.
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 61
trial and remedial hearings, and the injunction reflects due
consideration of “all relevant factors.” Id. at 880.
Again, we emphasize that the district court conducted
extensive proceedings before issuing the injunction and the
accompanying order. Courts crafting Section 16 relief are
“usually in a superior position to appraise and weigh the
evidence,” and this case is no exception. Zenith Radio, 395
U.S. at 123 (reviewing factual findings under the appropriate
“clearly erroneous” standard and reversing the appellate
court’s decision to set aside parts of a treble-damage award).
In addition to the jury’s specific findings on liability under
Sherman Act Section 1, corresponding to paragraphs four
through ten of the injunction, the district court supported the
liability verdict with further findings of fact and law in the
JMOL order. The court also gave the parties ample
opportunity to state and refine their positions on the
appropriate remedy. Over several months, the court
reviewed Google’s “blunderbuss of comments and
complaints” in 90-plus pages of objections to the proposed
injunction. The court also held evidentiary hearings with the
parties’ experts; received statements from the parties’
economists, technology experts, and engineers; accepted an
amicus brief from the FTC; and heard closing arguments on
the remedy. We pay heed to all this evidence—and the
district court’s proximity to it.
1. The Contractual Restrictions Need No Further
Explanation
Google’s first complaint about unduly burdensome
contractual restrictions is without merit. The thrust of
Google’s argument is that the district court failed to explain
why it did not adopt certain modifications proposed by
Google and did not consider ways to redress Google’s
62 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
anticompetitive agreements without imposing unnecessary
constraints. For starters, just because Google didn’t get
something that it proposed is no basis to upend the
injunction. The district court did not blindly adopt all of
Epic’s proposals either, and instead crafted an injunction that
responded to the evidence. The court followed our precedent
by using the parties’ proposals to tailor a remedy that would
“terminate the illegal monopoly, deny to the defendant the
fruits of its statutory violation, and ensure that there remain
no practices likely to result in monopolization in the future.”
Optronic, 20 F.4th at 486 (citation omitted).
Google specifically protests: (1) how the restriction on
conditional agreements “prohibits certain incentives to
OEMs regarding Play’s specific placement on Android
devices, even if the incentive places no condition on whether
the OEM deals with Play’s app distribution rivals or the
OEM itself is an Android app distribution rival”; and
(2) how the prohibitions on revenue sharing apply to lump-
sum payments and not just agreements to share a percentage
of Play Store revenue. But these provisions help unwind the
Play Store’s monopolization of the Android app-distribution
market and prevent “acts which are of the same type or class
as unlawful acts . . . found to have been committed.” Zenith
Radio, 395 U.S. at 132. The prohibition on OEM incentives
lowers barriers to entry by keeping Google from using its
clout to have the Play Store pre-downloaded on Android
smartphones. The revenue-sharing provision ensures that
Google does not simply enhance advantages that it
previously obtained by allocating fixed sums instead of
percentages of its Play Store revenue. Neither remedy
constitutes a “clear error of judgment” on the part of the
district court. La Quinta, 762 F.3d at 879 (citation omitted).
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 63
2. The State Settlement Was Duly Considered
As for Google’s pretrial settlement with the States, the
district court was well aware of that development. An expert
statement detailed why the States’ settlement “d[id] not fully
prohibit the conduct found to be anticompetitive at trial” or
“attempt to undo the effects of Google’s past anticompetitive
conduct,” and the court plainly resolved that the injunction
would be “the floor” dictating the settlement’s baseline—not
the other way around. That approach was entirely
appropriate and within the court’s remedial discretion: The
States made a considered decision to settle and accept
equitable relief plus a payment of $700 million. The district
court was under no obligation to let the settlement cabin the
injunction following the finding of liability against Google,
nor was the court required to pay lip service to the settlement
as a proxy for the public interest. Google’s suggestion that
the States’ settlement somehow should have driven the terms
of the injunction simply has no basis in law or fact. Even
more to the point, Google offers no concrete explanation
why the coexistence of the State settlement and the
injunction harms the public interest.
3. The Injunction Weighs Non-Parties’ Intellectual
Property and Security Interests
Google’s final two fact-based arguments do not accord
with the record or the terms of the injunction, in that they
raise intellectual property and security concerns that the
court was quite cognizant of and addressed in its remedy.
With respect to non-parties’ intellectual property interests,
the court heard expert testimony about those rare “one-in-a-
million situations,” wherein an Android app developer might
not want its products to be distributed over app stores other
than Google Play. Google proposed an opt-in mechanism,
64 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
whereas Epic offered the opt-out mechanism that the court
ultimately adopted: “Google will provide developers with a
mechanism for opting out of inclusion in catalog access for
any particular third-party Android app store.” This approach
reflects due consideration of developers’ intellectual
property interests as one of the many “relevant factors” in
crafting the injunction. Google swats at a gnat and misses in
its effort to bring down the injunction. La Quinta, 762 F.3d
at 880.
The same is true with respect to the injunction’s
treatment of non-parties’ security interests. Even setting
aside amici’s arguments that Google’s fear mongering
around security is “pretextual”—or that a more open
Android ecosystem could bring long-term security
benefits—the court had before it a robust record on the
potential security risks attendant to the catalog-access and
app-store distribution remedies. 19 As the explanatory order
laid out, that is why the injunction explicitly addresses these
risks in the app-store-distribution remedy, by allowing
19
Amicus briefs weighed in on both sides of the security issues. Former
national security officials warned that the injunction would “drastically
lower[] the barriers for potentially malicious third-parties to gain access
to the Google Play Store,” and the Chamber of Progress and other
interest groups worried that it “does not address what security
protections Google can provide for the new services it has been ordered
to supply.” In contrast, however, Microsoft proffered that “the idea that
Google’s restrictive practices are necessary to address [security] risks is
untenable,” noting that regulatory intervention in Europe has already
forced Google to permit in-app payment methods other than Google Play
Billing “without a security or privacy catastrophe.” The Electronic
Frontier Foundation went even further, suggesting that Google’s
“feudal” security model would be improved by the injunction in the long
run, because “the security offered by a monopolist is more fragile than
what a competitive market can provide.”
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 65
Google “to ensure that the platforms or stores, and the apps
they offer, are safe from a computer systems and security
standpoint.” It is also why the district court established the
Technical Committee to review and resolve “technical issues
about security and the like.” Again, these remedial measures
offer plainly articulated responses to the relevant factor of
non-parties’ security interests. They reflect an engagement
with the evidence presented in the record and, like all the
injunction’s remedies, a clear basis in that extensive factual
record.
G. Epic Has Standing
Lastly, Google misses the mark by challenging Epic’s
Article III standing to seek nationwide injunctive relief,
including the provisions that address catalog access, app-
store distribution, and the billing and anti-steering policies
that prohibit the Play Store from requiring or otherwise
favoring Google Play Billing. This argument goes to the
scope of the injunction, despite Google’s efforts to cloak it
as a jurisdictional issue and rope it into the current
controversy surrounding nationwide injunctions, recently
addressed by the Supreme Court in Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606
U.S. ----, No. 24A884, 2025 WL 1773631, at *4 (U.S. June
27, 2025). Google’s framing departs from the case law, and
the scope of a permanent injunction following a finding of
antitrust liability is hardly comparable to that of a
preliminary injunction on a constitutional question. CASA’s
holding about district courts’ authority under the Judiciary
Act of 1789 has no bearing on whether the district court here
exceeded its equitable powers under Section 16 of the
Clayton Act. The CASA court remarked at the outset that
individual plaintiffs’ standing was not at issue in that case.
Id. at n.2. It also clarified that a restriction on “universal
injunctions” does nothing to change the fact that “a
66 EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC
traditional, parties-only injunction can apply beyond the
jurisdiction of the issuing court.” Id. at n.1 (citing Steele v.
Bulova Watch Co., 344 U.S. 280, 289 (1952)).
The redressability element of standing—which Google
challenges here—is a question of “the relief that federal
courts are capable of granting.” Kirola v. City & Cnty. of
S.F., 860 F.3d 1164, 1176 (9th Cir. 2017); see also Seattle
Pac. Univ. v. Ferguson, 104 F.4th 50, 63 (9th Cir. 2024) (“[A
plaintiff] need only show that the court could fashion an
injunction that could redress its injuries.”). This
determination is distinct from the merits determination.
Kirola, 860 F.3d at 1175 (“[Article III’s] standards exist
apart from the merits, and are well established.”). Google’s
citations to Murthy are inapposite; unlike that situation, no
one contends that this injunction would be “unlikely to affect
the [alleged wrongdoer’s] decisions.” Murthy v. Mo., 603
U.S. 43, 74 (2024).
As for Google’s suggestion that Epic has shown no risk
of repeated injury caused by Play Store’s billing policies
because “Epic has not distributed apps on Play for years,”
we note that it was precisely Epic’s attempt to launch
Fortnite on the Play Store that led to this litigation. And
Google’s argument about the anti-steering provision is
foreclosed by Apple. 67 F.4th at 972 (upholding injunction
against anti-steering provision “because Epic is a competing
games distributor and would earn additional revenue but for
Apple’s restrictions”). Contrary to Google’s contentions, the
district court specifically noted trial evidence showing “the
anticompetitive nature of these anti-steering restrictions.”
Those anticompetitive effects, if the restrictions were not
enjoined, would continue to harm competition in the defined
markets of Android in-app billing and Android app
distribution, in which Epic is undisputedly a player. Nothing
EPIC GAMES, INC. V. GOOGLE LLC 67
more is needed to fulfill the constitutional minimum for
standing.
The ultimate scope of an injunction is reviewed for abuse
of discretion and is based on the merits—“not
redressability.” Seattle Pac., 104 F.4th at 63. To the extent
that Google challenges the district court’s exercise of
discretion in crafting the injunction, we disagree. The
nationwide prohibitions fit squarely within the district
court’s “large discretion” to craft equitable antitrust
remedies. Ford Motor, 405 U.S. at 573 (citation omitted).
These remedies and their scope are supported by the record
and the nature of the market, and we uphold them along with
the liability verdict and the entire injunction.
AFFIRMED.
Plain English Summary
FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT In re: Google Play Store Antitrust No.
Key Points
01FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT In re: Google Play Store Antitrust No.
02______________________________ 3:21-md-02981-JD _ 3:20-cv-05671-JD EPIC GAMES, INC., a Maryland Corporation, OPINION Plaintiff - Appellee, v.
03GOOGLE LLC; GOOGLE IRELAND, LTD.; GOOGLE COMMERCE, LTD.; GOOGLE ASIA PACIFIC PTE, LTD.; GOOGLE PAYMENT CORP., Defendants - Appellants.
04GOOGLE LLC GOOGLE LLC; GOOGLE IRELAND, LTD.; GOOGLE COMMERCE, LTD.; GOOGLE ASIA PACIFIC PTE, LTD.; GOOGLE PAYMENT CORP., Defendants - Appellants.
Frequently Asked Questions
FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT In re: Google Play Store Antitrust No.
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