“The Supreme Court is Google’s last hope to avoid an Epic reckoning in October,” I wrote last week. Google apparently agrees. Today, it’s finally elevated its Epic v. Google case, the one that might fracture its control over the entire Android app ecosystem, to the Supreme Court level. Google has now confirmed it will appeal its case to the Supreme Court, and in the meanwhile, it’s asking the Court to press pause one more time on the permanent injunction that would start taking away its control.
On September 12th, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that permanent injunction and gave Google until October to stop forcing app developers to use its Google Play Billing for payments, allow them to link to other ways to pay and other places to download apps, set their own prices, and more.
But the Supreme Court might see it differently. It might agree with Google’s argument that the lower courts overstepped, or that Apple’s win in Epic v. Apple is relevant to the Google case, or any number of other arguments that you can read in the full document below.
Google says it will fully appeal to the Supreme Court for certiorari by October 27th, 2025, and is asking the Supreme Court to decide whether it’ll press pause on the injunction by October 17th. Meanwhile, the district court judge who issued the injunction, Judge James Donato, is asking Google and Epic to explain how they’ll comply with it in his courtroom on October 30th.
