In the lawsuit between Apple and Epic Games, another judge has expressed worries about how open Apple is being in court. Judge Thomas Hixson denied Apple’s request for additional time to produce 1.3 million documents related to recent App Store changes, implying that the tech giant may have misled the court.
The documents are about changes to the App Store that happened in January 2024. These changes were done to follow a court decision from 2021. Judge Hixson doubted Apple’s statement that they just found out about how many documents there were. He said it was “hard to believe.”
This development follows a similar implication by the original judge, who suggested Apple had not been truthful about the reasons behind its new App Store policy.
The dispute between Apple and Epic Games began in August 2020 when Epic introduced a direct payment option in its Fortnite app, bypassing Apple’s in-app purchase system. Apple responded by removing Fortnite from the App Store and terminating Epic’s developer account, leading to a series of lawsuits and countersuits.
Judge Hixson denied Apple’s request for more time, keeping the deadline for turning in documents on September 30, 2024. The judge pointed out that Apple must meet this deadline, no matter how difficult it might be.
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