• by Wendy Davis , October 2, 2025

The trade group ACT--The App Association is urging the Supreme Court to grant Google's request to halt a lower court injunction that would require it to significantly revise its app marketplace.

The injunction's key terms would require Google to host other companies' app stores, and give outside companies access to Google's library of apps unless the apps' developers opt out.

Those provisions would create "real security risks in the app ecosystem on which the app developers depend," The App Association says in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Wednesday.

The organization -- which represents small and medium-size app developers, and is sponsored by large companies including Amazon, Apple, and Verizon -- adds that the injunction "defaults app developers into relationships with sketchy, knock-off Play stores, with which they want no business."

The injunction, issued by U.S. District Court Judge James Donato in the Northern District of California, grew out of a lawsuit by Fortnite developer Epic Games, which alleged that Google's Play store policies violated antitrust law.

A jury sided against Google, and found that the company created or maintained an illegal monopoly in two “markets” -- Android app distribution, and Android in-app billing.

Google appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently upheld both the jury's verdict and Donato's injunction.

Last week, Google petitioned Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to stay the injunction, arguing that the company -- as well as developers and consumers -- will face "irreparable harm" if the injunction goes into effect.

Among other arguments, Google says allowing outside companies to access the Play catalog will create cybersecurity risks.

The App Association agrees, writing that the order will "push app developers’ apps to hundreds of knock-off Play stores."

"Some of these knock-off Play stores will almost certainly have inadequate resources and lack the experience to screen for safety, security, and inappropriate content," the group writes. "Indeed, in the past, entire knock-off Play stores have been created by hackers to steal sensitive information."

The organization also says that requiring Google to make apps available to "knock-off Play stores" on an opt-out basis disregards app developers' rights.

"Currently, developers contract with Google to distribute their apps through the Play store. When they do so, they grant Google a nonexclusive license to use their intellectual property," the group writes.

"This license granted to Google neither provides parallel grants to other online marketplace operators nor grants Google the right to sublicense the developers’ intellectual property out to others ... By instructing Google to make developers’ apps available on other online marketplaces, the district court’s order entirely disregards developers’ intellectual property and rights," the organization argues.

Kagan has directed Epic to respond to Google's request by 4 p.m. Friday.