A judge has ruled that Apple CEO Tim Cook should sit for a seven-hour deposition in the upcoming case against Epic Games, according to Gizmodo.
What’s more, Apple’s attempt to subpoena Samsung in the case has also been denied.
According to court documents, Epic Games wanted to depose Cook for a proposed eight hours. Apple then tried to cite the apex doctrine, which basically prevents a high-level corporate employee from being deposed. Gizmodo says that Apple later offered a concession of four hours. According to Judge Thomas S. Hixon, however, “this dispute is less than meets the eye.”
Hixon writes that the apex doctrine “limits the length of a deposition, rather than barring it altogether,” and that given the circumstances, the dispute is a question of whether Cook should be deposed for “four hours, eight hours, or some length of time in between.” Hence, Hixon’s ruling that Cook should be deposed for seven hours.
Hixon denied Apple’s request to subpoena internal documents from Samsung. Since Samsung isn’t even involved in the Apple vs. Epic legal brouhaha, the judge characterized the request as “a quirky deep dive” into Samsung’s relationship with Epic, according to Gizmodo.
This is all part of an ongoing legal battle between Apple and Epic. On Aug. 13,2020, Epic Games announced that it had introduced a new direct payment option in the Fortnite app for iPhone and iPad, allowing players to purchase 1000 V-Bucks for US$7.99 rather than $9.99 through Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism. Shortly thereafter, Apple removed the gamer from the App Store for violating store polices and followed up by shutting down the company’s developer account. Epic immediately filed a lawsuit against Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
In September 2020 Apple filed a countersuit to stop the game maker from using its own payment system for Fortnite. Apple also accused Epic of theft and sought extra monetary damages beyond breach of contract.
