Apple has requested that a London tribunal throw out a lawsuit worth up to £785 million over its App Store Fees.

The lawsuit representing more than 1,500 app makers alleges that Apple charged third-party developers unfair commissions on purchases of apps or other content.

Lawyers representing the competition law professor Sean Ennis, who raised the case, say that the commissions of up to 30 per cent indicate that the company has abused its dominant position in the market. The case was filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) in 2023.

Apple has argued that 85 per cent of developers on the App Store do not pay any commission at all, calling on CAT to throw out the “unsustainable” lawsuit. A lawyer for the company also said that developers cannot have a claim in the UK unless they were charged on purchases made through the UK App Store and that this would only apply to a small minority of claimants.

In response to the request, the Ennis’s lawyers have said that the iPhone maker "has come to the UK to offer services to UK businesses on a UK market and has abused its position by overcharging them and that this means UK law applies to the entire case and it should continue.

This is not the only App Store-related lawsuit Apple is fighting in the UK. The other, arguably bigger case, is a mass lawsuit being brought on behalf of around 20 million UK users over App Store commissions.

That case, and another over allegedly defective iPhone batteries brought on behalf of around 24 million iPhone users, are expected to come to trial in 2025.

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