by The epic lawsuit against Apple drags on.
a magistrate judge has denied a last-minute request from Apple to delay the production of approximately 1.3 million documents related to changes to the App Store the company made in January.
“Prior to yesterday’s report, Apple never indicated to Epic Games or to the Court that the number of documents it would need to review significantly exceeded its prior estimate,” Judge Hixson said. “This information would have been apparent to Apple weeks ago. It is simply unbelievable that Apple only learned this information in the two weeks after the last status report.”
In a status report to the court filed on September 26, Apple asked for more time to produce the full set of documents. The company told the court it had discovered that meeting court-ordered search parameters had turned up many more documents related to Apple’s decision-making process.
Judge Thomas S. Hixson holds Apple to the original deadline of Monday, September 30, 2024. Original Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers originally ordered Apple to produce the relevant documents by May 31. Judge Hixson called Apple’s last-minute plea for more time “bad behavior.”
“This raises several related concerns,” Hixson added. “First, Apple’s status reports were not good… it’s up to Apple to figure out how to meet that deadline, but Monday is indeed the deadline,” Hixson said, reiterating his original deadline.
The never ending battle
This is part of the long-running dispute between Epic and Apple that started when Epic deliberately circumvented the store’s rules at the time to offer a direct link to Epic for a fee. Apple subsequently banned Epic from the App Store.
During the ongoing litigation, Apple responded to antitrust concerns from the European Union and has since changed its rules for the EU. It now allows third-party payment options in the EU version of the App Store if the app or service developer wants to include that. Epic has already opened its own EU store.
Epic is pursuing the case because it claims that Apple has not fully complied with Judge Rogers’ ruling in the US and other countries. In denying Apple’s request for more time, Judge Hixson ruled that Apple is capable of reviewing so many documents over the course of a weekend.
He concluded that Apple’s fumbling in producing the volume of requested documents is because complying with the request is “a disadvantage for Apple.” In theory, the documents could show that Apple deliberately failed to comply with all of Judge Rogers’ guidelines.
