Epic's lawsuit against Apple drags on… and on.
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A magistrate judge has denied Apple's latest request to delay the production of about 1.3 million documents related to changes to the App Store made in January.
“Before yesterday's report, Apple had never disclosed to Epic Games or the court that the number of documents it would need to review significantly exceeded its prior estimate,” Judge Hickson said. “This information would have been obvious to Apple weeks ago. It is simply incredible that Apple only learned of this information two weeks after the last status report.”
In a status report filed with the court on Sept. 26, Apple asked for more time to produce the full trove of documents. The company told the court that it found that following the court-ordered search parameters resulted in the recovery of far more documents related to Apple’s decision-making process.
Judge Thomas S. Hickson is holding Apple to its original deadline of Monday, Sept. 30, 2024. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers initially ordered Apple to produce the relevant documents on May 31. Judge Hickson called Apple’s last-minute request for more time “bad behavior.”
“This raises several related concerns,” Hickson added. “First, Apple’s status reports have been lousy… Apple has to figure out how to meet that deadline, but Monday is really the deadline,” Hickson said, reiterating his original deadline.
The Neverending Battle
This is part of a long-running dispute between Epic and Apple that began when Epic intentionally circumvented the store's rules at the time to offer a direct link to Epic for payment. Apple subsequently banned Epic from the App Store.
During the ongoing trial, Apple responded to the European Union's antitrust concerns and has since changed its EU rules. It now allows third-party payments in the EU version of the App Store if the developer of an app or service chooses to enable it. Epic has already opened its own store in the EU.
Epic is pursuing the case because it argues that Apple has not fully complied with Judge Rogers' ruling in the US and elsewhere. Judge Hickson, in denying Apple's request for more time, suggested that Apple has time to review as many documents as it can over the weekend.
He suggested that Apple's delay in providing the requested volume of documents is because complying with the request is “all bad news for Apple.” The documents could, in theory, show that Apple intentionally failed to comply with Judge Rogers's full instructions.
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