Apple has two trillion reasons to fight for the App Store

Apple Inc.’s lawyers’ have an unenviable task: Defending a key underpinning of a $2 trillion enterprise comes with high stakes.

The outcome of the bench trial between Apple and Epic Games, which gets under way Monday, is far from certain. And even a ruling there may not settle the issue for some time, as the legal and financial muscle on both sides makes appeals a near certainty.

Apple has among the world’s deepest pockets, with nearly $83 billion in net cash and a business that generated more than $90 billion in free cash flow over the past four quarters, according to FactSet. Epic, meanwhile, raised $1 billion in its latest funding round earlier this month and has a list of backers that includes Sony, Walt Disney and Chinese videogame titan Tencent.