It's being reported today that although two of Apple's App Store policies were found to be monopolistic, the UK's competition regulator was banned for missing the statutory deadline. It cannot be sanctioned

The cause of the antitrust case was based on two App Store policies. The first was that  Apple prohibits the provision of cloud gaming services on the App Store. The second is that Apple only approves alternative browsers on its platform that use its own WebKit rendering engine.

In June last year, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigated Apple's two policies and determined that they were indeed monopolistic. However, the CMA previously referred to its investigation as a "market study" rather than "market investigation. Because of this mislabeling, the CMA can't take any action against Apple. While the CMA has reopened a new case targeting the same two issues, this time labeling it "market research" Apple argues that the CMA has missed its deadline to open an investigation. That's because the law says regulators "should" open an investigation on the same day they publish preliminary findings. Apple believes that the word "should" means the same as "must", while the CMA believes that the word "should" only gives it the power to initiate an investigation immediately, not an obligation. While Apple's explanation seemed more reasonable, both parties actually had legal precedent to back their case, so the CMA appealed to the Competition Appeals Tribunal.

The outside world thought that Apple seemed to have a better position at the time, and today's ruling confirms this. According to Reuters, the Competition Appeals Tribunal rejected the CMA's decision to open an investigation and today rejected the CMA's appeal to the ruling. Application for Appeal. In its decision rejecting the application for appeal, the tribunal said the law was clear as to when the CMA could open a market investigation. "The letter of the law matters, even if it produces undesirable or unfortunate results," the court said.

While the CMA can still take its case to the UK Supreme Court, the regulator has not yet said whether it will do so, saying only that it is carefully considering the court's decision and considering its next steps.

Apple is currently facing similar antitrust allegations and investigations in other countries and regions, such as the United States, the European Union, Japan, and South Korea.