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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

Antitrust requires demonstrating harm to consumers, not just to Epic.

1. Not necessarily. Per se violations do not require proof of consumer harm, for example. Epic's tying claim against Apple is an alleged per se violation.

2. It was already established in Apple v. Pepper that developers had standing to sue Apple over App Store policies. The case then went up to the Supreme Court which ruled that consumers also have standing to sue.

3. Showing consumer harm may help Epic win their suit. But it's not necessary to establish standing to bring the suit in the first place.

Epic needs a strong case, not a minimum viable case. They need to demonstrate the full extent of the problem. An allegedly illegal contract shouldn't stop them from doing that.

While I certainly agree that Epic needs a strong case in order to win, it's not clear that their actions with regards to Fortnite actually help their legal case so much as their public relations.

In any case it seems like the goalposts have been moved from "Epic needs to establish standing" to "Epic needs a strong case". My point was only to correct the former misconception which for some reason has been incorrectly repeated all over this thread.

Maybe they don't need consumer harm for their one per se claim, but what about the other 9 claims? They need it for more than just PR reasons. I don't know if standing is considered separately per claim, but if not then it's an issue of terminology, not substance. Feel free to substitute the appropriate legal terminology for the ability to bring a claim.

To clarify, in order for Epic to bring a claim it needs to show that it has personally been harmed. In order for Epic to win the claim it will need to prove that competition has been harmed.

Standing needs to be established separately for each claim, yes, but I expect in this case the $300 million in fees takes care of that across the board.

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