By Mike Scarcella

(Reuters) -Apple on Wednesday failed to persuade a U.S. appeals court to pause key parts of a federal judge's order requiring the iPhone maker to immediately open its lucrative App Store to more competition.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Apple's request to put the provisions on hold as the tech company appeals the judge's order, which came in a long-running antitrust lawsuit brought by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in April found Apple in contempt of an earlier injunction order she issued in the Epic Games case.

Apple in a statement said it was "disappointed with the decision not to stay the district court’s order, and we’ll continue to argue our case during the appeals process."

The judge on April 30 ordered Apple to end several practices that she said were designed to circumvent the injunction, including a new 27% fee Apple imposed on app developers when its customers complete an app purchase outside the App Store.

The court also prohibited Apple from restricting where developers place links to make purchases outside of an app.

Epic Games founder and chief executive Tim Sweeney said in a post on X after the appeals court ruling that the "long national nightmare of the Apple tax is ended."

In its emergency appeal, Apple said the ruling blocked the company from "exercising control over core aspects of its business operations" and forced it to give free access to its services.

Epic Games countered that Apple was trying to continue evading competition and collecting fees that the judge had barred.

Apple has faced a "surge of genuine competition" since Gonzalez Rogers issued her April injunction, as developers updated apps with "better payment methods, better deals, and better consumer choice," Epic said.

Epic Games sued Apple in 2020 to loosen its control over transactions in applications that use its iOS operating system and how apps are distributed to consumers.

Apple mostly won the case, but Gonzalez Rogers in 2021 said Apple must allow developers to more easily steer consumers to potentially cheaper non-Apple payment options.

Apple defied that court order to maintain a revenue stream worth billions of dollars, Gonzalez Rogers wrote in April.

She also said Apple had misled the court about its efforts to comply with her injunction and referred the company and one of its executives to federal prosecutors for a possible criminal contempt investigation.

(Reporting by Mike Scarcella, Editing by David Bario, Rosalba O'Brien, Rod Nickel and David Gregorio)