Isn’t that an issue Epic has brought in themselves? Their “Fortnight division” has put at risk their “Unreal Engine division”.
Or put another way, they have two products at different levels of the stack and they have consciously chosen to risk one (the game) to leverage all their customer’s of their other product (Unreal Engine) onto their side in this war.
By contrast, with respect to the Unreal Engine and the developer tools, the Court finds the opposite result. In this regard, the contracts related to those applications were not breached.
And then:
The court also finds that "Apple has chosen to act severely, and by doing so, has impacted non-parties, and a third-party developer ecosystem. In this regard, the equities do weigh against Apple."
That's what the judge is ruling is not allowed. There's no basis for it. Apple can't go after an unrelated business because it's having a temper tantrum and feeling spiteful.
The fact that fortnite is built on UE doesn't have any significance here.
They're not going after "unrelated business", though. They cancelled Epic's developer account which is exactly the remediation listed in the agreement for the account. If you violate the terms, your account is suspended. Epic brought this on themselves when they made their move without thinking about how that would affect the rest of their business.
No, they didn't. They responded to Epic threatening to cease assistance for the 2nd arm of Epic if the Fortnite arm refused to comply. Only 1 account was cancelled.
They literally threatened to cancel the second account. This is what the injunction is about, and the judge ruled that Apple can't cancel the second account and prevent Epic from using Mac tools to legally develop Unreal.
You would know this if you read the injunction that is being discussed...
That's not what the judge ruled at all so I'm confused by your statements about reading the injunction. All the judge "ruled" was that Apple needs to maintain the current status quo of their other arrangements until they actually rule on the main cause of the case. If Apple wins, then there's another matter to attend to. If they don't, then the status quo is still maintained and the matter is over. What the judge actually ruled was akin to "You go to that side of the room and you go to the other. Stop hitting each other while I figure out who broke the toy." The judge didn't make any kind of determination on the legality of anything and you can't make a legal judgement on a threat of doing something.
Apple threatened to cancel Epic's second account and cut off Epic from its macOS tools starting Aug 28th; Epic said that unfairly threatened its other lines of businesses and a court should prevent Apple from doing so until the antitrust suit finished (and should also reinstate Fortnite until the suit finished); the judge ruled that Apple cutting off Epic's second account from the Unreal tools before the court case finished was unreasonable and legally prevented it from doing so, but that banning Fortnite was not unreasonable and did not legally prevent it from doing so.
Judges make legal decisions. If a judge says you can't do something, that means it's illegal; judges can rule whether a future action is illegal, including based on a threat, and that's what this injunction does. This injunction references Apple's threat and, ultimately, says that they legally can't do it (for now), just as Epic can't legally force Apple to reinstate Fortnite (for now).
But anyway, as to your original assertion that this injunction is unrelated to Apple's threat to terminate Epic's account with the Apple Developer Program, here's a direct quote from the injunction:
"THEREFORE, APPLE AND ALL PERSONS IN ACTIVE CONCERT OR PARTICIPATION WITH APPLE, ARE TEMPORARILY RESTRAINED from taking adverse action against Epic Games with respect to restricting, suspending or terminating any affiliate of Epic Games, such as Epic International, from Apple’s Developer Program [italics mine]"
Also, re: your assertion that "If Apple wins, then there's another matter to attend to. If they don't, then the status quo is still maintained and the matter is over." — I don't think anyone involved in the antitrust case, including the judge, ruled or believes anything like "the matter is over" and "the status quo is maintained" if Apple is found to be violating antitrust law. The status quo legally could not be maintained by Apple in that case. What exactly Apple would have to do would depend on what precisely the judge ruled, but maintaining the status quo would not be an option.
I mean you can read the court ruling for yourself. The court disagrees with you there for reasons specified. The court does rule that "Epic brought this on themselves" for the Fortnite app on iOS but not for Apple restricting its SDK for Unreal Engine.
No, they didn't. The court ruled in a way to minimize the calculation of damages. Apple may still be able to continue doing what they intended and revoke that partnership but the judge just ruled that they need to keep operating as they have until this is settled so that they don't have to factor in the potential liabilities of both points.
Epic knowingly, intentionally, and publicly defied Apple's rules. In response Apple "threatened" exactly what they threaten every single other company doing the same -- to suspend or terminate your developer accounts if you don't remediate the issue. There is absolutely a basis for it, it certainly isn't "unrelated", and trying to attribute motives like spite or having a "temper tantrum" is baseless nonsense.
The court has blocked it because there could be greater harm in the short term (although that is grossly overblown -- the UE wouldn't stop working in the short or even medium term), but don't be confused into thinking this isn't a completely rote, normal response.
>The fact that fortnite is built on UE doesn't have any significance here.
You understand that Fortnite and UE are made by the same company, right? The canard that it has anything to do with what engine Fortnite uses is absurd noise.
Wow, this site has completely given into the cult of Apple. Thankfully the judge is a reasonable person who is interested in actual harms more than the letter of a TOS.
Or put another way, they have two products at different levels of the stack and they have consciously chosen to risk one (the game) to leverage all their customer’s of their other product (Unreal Engine) onto their side in this war.