Judge Denies Apple Request in Google Antitrust Case

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta today denied Apple’s last-minute request to allow it to represent itself in U.S. v Google. The reason? It was filed far too late in the proceedings.

“Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24 governs intervention as of right and permissive intervention, both of which require a timely motion. Because Apple’s motion is untimely, the court must deny it,” the judge wrote in his ruling. “The court, however, will permit Apple to participate as amicus curiae and file post-hearing submissions to ensure consideration of Apple’s views when crafting the remedial decree.”

Apple found itself ensnared in Google’s historic U.S. antitrust case and was forced to acknowledge that the online giant now pays it over $20 billion a year to be the default search engine on the iPhone. In the wake of Google’s epic defeat, judge Mehta said he would take up to a year to issue a remedy for the company’s illegal maintenance of its Internet Search monopoly, and he will hold hearings in March or April to help determine that remedy,

Apple’s last-minute filing last month–literally on Christmas Eve–was an attempt to ensure it would not lose out on the lucrative search payments despite Google’s defeat. It argued that Google was unlikely to try and protect this arrangement given the gravity of some of the other proposed remedies, which could see Google forced to divest itself of Chrome and/or Android.

Judge Mehta’s ruling has some harsh words for Apple, which “knew or should have known since this suit’s inception that its contractual rights would be directly affected,” and thus should have filed this request much earlier in the process.

“Using the inception of this suit in October 2020 as the relevant starting point, Apple waited over four years before moving to intervene,” he writes. “Such an extensive delay weighs heavily against timeliness … Furthermore, this court has been clear from the first status conference following the liability decision, held on September 6, 2024, that the remedies phase would need to proceed on a compressed schedule … Despite the court’s repeated indications that time is of the essence, Apple did not act expeditiously.”