Apple wants a federal judge to let it collect 15% when an iPhone user taps a link, leaves the app, and buys something on the developer’s website. Apple does not run that checkout. Its own support page says the developer handles refunds and subscription management. Yet Apple wants $15 from a $100 sale because the customer arrived holding an iPhone.
The most damning number comes from Apple. In its August 13 court filing, the company admits that a commission limited to the costs the Ninth Circuit said it may recover would produce a rate of effectively 0%. Apple is asking for up to 15% anyway.
Apple says the price should reflect the value of its entire platform. The appeals court said Apple may recover genuine costs tied to web purchase links, plus a narrowly apportioned slice of intellectual property directly used by those links. Apple is trying to turn ownership of iOS into a permanent claim on somebody else’s cash register.
Apple already tried 27%
This dispute started with Apple’s rules against steering customers toward other payment options. In 2021, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that those rules violated California’s Unfair Competition Law and ordered Apple to allow buttons, links, and other calls to action pointing to outside purchasing methods. The same trial did not find Apple liable under federal antitrust law. The injunction was narrower: Apple had to stop blocking informed consumer choice.
Apple responded in 2024 by allowing links under terms designed to make them useless. It imposed a 27% commission on web purchases, including some sales completed within seven days after the customer followed a link. Add an outside payment processor and a developer could pay more than Apple’s familiar 30% in app fee.
The district court found Apple in willful civil contempt in April 2025. Its order showed that Apple had studied an option with no commission, then settled on a fee that stripped away nearly all of the economic reason to offer another checkout. Internal analysis predicted that the 27% plan would attract very little developer adoption. The court found that Apple chose to maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream instead of complying with the injunction.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the contempt finding in December 2025. It also ruled that a permanent ban on every possible commission went too far. That gave Apple an opening, but a limited one. The court said Apple could seek recovery for costs that are genuinely and reasonably necessary to coordinate external links, “but no more.” It excluded security and privacy features provided through Apple’s own payment system and required shared intellectual property costs to be reduced proportionally.
Apple’s own accounting lands at zero
Apple’s new filing tries to prove that 15% is reasonable. It also explains why the court’s narrower test produces almost nothing.
According to Apple’s proffer, the incremental engineering work needed for web links costs no more than the low single digit millions of dollars. Apple identified 14 patent assets directly connected to linked purchases. Ten are also used for Apple’s in app payment system, which means their value must be apportioned instead of charged again in full. Apple’s valuation expert concluded that the remaining intellectual property would not support an ongoing percentage commission. Apple does not even track these web transactions.
Put those facts into the framework the appeals court supplied and Apple says the result is effectively 0%. Apple reached that figure in its own filing.
Apple reaches 15% only by changing the question. The company asks the judge to value its SDKs, APIs, App Store distribution, user base, reputation, and decades of research spending. Apple says it invested more than $245 billion in research and development from fiscal 2005 through fiscal 2025. That spending built a valuable platform. It does not measure the cost of letting a developer open a web page.
Apple built tools developers use
In its filing, Apple says developers benefit from iOS, development tools, app review, distribution, and access to customers. Apple created those systems and keeps them running. It argues that the $99 annual developer fee does not pay for all of them and that a revenue share gives Apple reason to keep investing when apps succeed.
Apple has a right to price work it actually performs. The Ninth Circuit left room for documented coordination costs and directly used intellectual property. Apple could open its books, show those costs, and ask the court to approve a fee that covers them.
Apple wants to price the transaction using the total value of the platform it controls. The logic has no natural stopping point. If access to an iPhone customer entitles Apple to 15% of a purchase completed elsewhere, Apple gets a share even when the developer runs the checkout and bears the customer support burden.
Apple’s own support page for purchases outside its payment system tells customers to contact the developer for refunds, subscription management, privacy problems, abuse, and fraud. That is a sensible allocation of responsibility when the developer runs the transaction. It also exposes the nerve of demanding $15 while disclaiming the work that usually justifies a payment fee.
A toll is still a toll
Apple’s proposed rates are 15% for standard apps, 10% for subscription renewals and some partner programs, and 5% for members of its Small Business Program, according to the court filing. The judge has not approved them. Under the Ninth Circuit’s order, Apple cannot collect a commission on linked purchases until the district court approves one.
A 15% toll can still defeat payment competition. A developer that sends a $100 purchase to the web would owe Apple $15 before paying its own processor and supporting the purchase. That can erase the savings that make another checkout useful. Customers can end up with fewer choices while Apple preserves much of the revenue the original injunction was supposed to put at risk.
Apple should be paid for Apple services. It should show what those services cost and collect a defensible amount. Its own filing says the court’s test produces 0%. The remaining 15 percentage points measure Apple’s power to demand tribute from commerce happening beyond its checkout.