Epic, Apple argue over lack of discovery in 'Fortnite' pretrial period

In the Joint Case Management Statement filed on Monday, in advance of the case management conference scheduled for October 19, Epic and Apple both have issues with how the other company is handling the discovery portion of the lawsuits. Each company accuses the other of being uncooperative in different ways.

In Epic's portion of the statement, it accuses Apple of failing to provide all of the documentation it needs, namely that Apple's list of custodians that documents are supplied about does not include two prominent figures in Apple's history. Of the six people listed, Epic spotted that none of them are co-founder and late CEO Steve Jobs and current CEO Tim Cook.

Furthermore, Epic also claims Apple "repeatedly relied" on the two men during the two previous motion hearings. However, Apple countered by saying it didn't rely on them, rather that it mentioned the two twice, referencing Tim Cook's statement to the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and "an AppleInsider article quoting Steve Jobs."

Apple also claims it has already provided Epic "with the 3.6 million documents" produced by Apple in its developer class action and consumer class action suits. Epic believes these documents should have been provided sooner.

On Epic's side, it has already made "an initial production of more than 16,000 pages form the files of Timothy Sweeney," the CEO of Epic. Apple counters by claiming Epic may have "cherry-picked" the documents that may "omit a significant amount of relevant materials."

Apple also claims Epic received a third-party discovery request before it formed its lawsuit against Apple. Epic was said to have told Apple "to just wait a bit," then filed the lawsuit before responding to the subpoena.

After Monday's case management conference, both sides have until January 6 2020 to file data for the trial, which is set to take place sometime in July 2021.