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Google, Apple Drive 'Black Box' IP Policing with App Store Rules

Apple Inc. and Google LLC app stores have drawn the ire of small app developers who accuse the tech giants of harming their businesses through opaque IP rules and takedown procedures, combined with their sweeping market power.

The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act created a formal system giving online service providers safe harbor from infringement claims for their users’ activity if they cooperate with takedown requests that would otherwise swamp federal courts. The US Justice Department and more than a dozen state attorneys general accused Apple in March of engaging in anticompetitive activity, using “shapeshifting rules” in its App Store guidelines and developer agreements to “throttle competitive alternatives.” Google, too, continues to jostle with an antitrust crackdown in California federal court in its battle with Epic Games Inc., recently scoring a temporary pause on an order that would have forced it to overhaul its app marketplace.

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