에픽(Epic) 대(對) 애플(Apple) 반독점소송: 일심법원의 관련시장 획정을 중심으로

In the glare of public attention the North California District Court delivered its decision for the Epic v. Apple case in September 2021. The judge ordered Apple to remove its ban of a link or a button which leads to alternative purchase systems and of a communication via an email address which was voluntarily provided by users. She also ordered Epic to pay Apple damages for violating its developer agreement. The Court, however, rejected all Epic claims based on federal Antitrust Act. This paper reviewed the relevant market part of the disputes as it was the judge’s core foundation of the decision. Following the Supreme Court decision in the Amex case, this Court recognized that the Apple platform mediates transaction between the parties of the two sides and defined the relevant market as ‘mobile gaming transaction’, declining to accept neither Epic’s nor Apple’s market definitions. This paper argued that the Court missed the substantial difference of the facts that Amex competed not with merchants on whom restriction was imposed but with other credit card companies, while Apple competed with Epic in alleged implicit alliance with Google against app developers, and that user-developer transaction is only one of many important transactions in this multiplex platform. The Court also failed to properly take into account new developments in the antitrust implications of aftermarket and data market monopolization.