Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Denied the Coalition for App Fairness’s Motion to File an Amicus Brief

Florian Mueller, with a detail I haven’t seen reported elsewhere:

U.S. courts — and especially appeals courts — normally have a permissive approach toward amicus briefs, above all in high-stakes high-profile cases like this one. It rarely happens that they tell stakeholders they are unwelcome to join a proceeding as “friends of the court” contributing potentially useful information. Here, however, a filing by the Coalition for App Fairness (whose three key members are Epic, Spotify, and Match Group, which is best known for Tinder) and four of its members (Match Group, Tile, Basecamp, and Knitrino) has been flatly rejected by the Ninth Circuit.

As a result, the CAF now faces a credibility issue in any other App Store cases around the globe in which it may try to support Epic or even another one of its large members. Even if other courts ultimately allowed the CAF to join other cases, Apple would point to the Ninth Circuit decision, which at a minimum would diminish the credibility of anything the CAF would say on Epic’s behalf. The CAF has now been stigmatized as part of an Epic anti-Apple initiative designed to raise issues regardless of whether those were “organic or manufactured” as the evidence shows.

Not quite sure what to make of this, but if nothing else, it’s a sign of how overwhelming Apple’s victory is in this case.

★ Tuesday, 14 December 2021