Apple is trying to request documents as “evidence” for the trial in the dispute with Epic Games. Sometimes it works better and sometimes worse, especially since the iPhone manufacturer also depends on outside help. Now it turned out that Facebook is not helping Apple as much in this matter as Tim Cook and Co. would like it to be.
Vivek Sharma is a board member at Facebook. He is called as a witness by Epic Games. For this reason, Apple would like to see a number of documents in order to be able to cross-examine the witness as well.
No cross-examination possible?
For this reason, Apple requested Sharma for a “limited number of documents,” according to court records emerges. However, the term “limited” seems to be very vague. Because obviously Apple wants to see over 17,000 documents.
The person responsible for Facebook considers Apple’s approach to be unjustified and, above all, far too short-term.
Facebook has already provided Apple with 1,600 documents to prepare for the process. 200 of them are said to be directly or indirectly related to Sharma.
Is Facebook boycotting Apple?
If Apple has its way, Facebook ignores Apple’s requests with regularity and delays the issue of the documents.
The group from Cupertino has apparently been trying to achieve the obligation to testify with the help of coercive threats (English subpoena) since December 2020. Since then, they have met with Facebook several times in order to be able to limit the number of documents required.
Disregarded agreement?
Apple and Facebook have apparently agreed that the iPhone manufacturer would not have requested any further documents if no person responsible from Facebook had testified. But then Epic Games added Sharma to the list of witnesses.
Dispute about times
If Facebook has its way, then Apple contacted the company too late with the request. For its part, Apple accuses Facebook of having delayed the publication and only announced much too late that it did not want to publish any more documents.
In May there should be a first negotiation in the US in the proceedings between Epic Games and Apple. The game manufacturer filed a lawsuit after Apple terminated the company’s developer account as a result of violating the app store regulations. Since then, Epic Games has also created more theaters of war, including a complaint in the EU and another lawsuit in Australia.
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