Apple's Samsung Korea demand prompts DOJ rebuke in antitrust lawsuit

The U.S. Department of Justice has complained about Apple's request for evidence from Samsung in its antitrust lawsuit, calling it a waste of time due to being too late in the process.

In early April, Apple turned to the Hague Convention to demand documents from Samsung Korea, to help deal with its antitrust lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ has now criticized the move because of its impeccably bad timing.

The DOJ sued Apple for allegedly stifling competition through proprietary hardware and software in March 2024. After appeals and dismissal requests, the lawsuit moved forward into the discovery phase in June 2025.

Three-quarters of a year into discovery, Apple demanded documents from Samsung in South Korea using the Hague Evidence Convention. The DOJ naturally complained to the court.

The filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, made on April 20 and spotted by 9to5Mac, has the DOJ taking offense to the Hague Convention invocation. It claims that Apple should've done it a lot earlier.

While Samsung Electronics has a U.S. arm, Apple sent off a request to the main South Korean entity under the convention. This is apparently despite the U.S. version being subject to normal U.S federal rules of discovery.

Apple's decision takes place extremely late in the discovery period, nine months after it opened. Though Apple immediately subpoenaed third parties at the time, it waited six months until January 2026 to go after Samsung Electronics America.

It then waited a further eight weeks until April 7 to file its motion to get documents from Samsung Electronics in Korea.

The DOJ doubts any excuse from Apple on the delay would be credible as Apple has known that Samsung had a role in the antitrust dispute since March 2024. Also, the DOJ says Apple knew that Samsung Korea may have documents at the time of the discovery period's opening in June 2025.

Not to mention that Apple has also dealt with similar discovery issues before in earlier antitrust suits that required third-party discovery. It therefore should have been aware of the timescales and what should be accessible from which entities beforehand.

More time, not enough time

While the DOJ views this as shortsighted on Apple's part already, it also doubts the court's extra allowances to enable the convention to conclude appropriately are enough.

The court granted Apple's request to extend the discovery period until January 29, 2027, adding that there probably won't be any further discovery after that without good reason.

This gives at most nine months for the convention's Letter of Request to be executed with Apple Samsung. The DOJ doubts this will actually happen, calling it "an outcome which, though it may be possible, is not probable."

The DOJ concludes that it doesn't take any position on whether the Letter of Request should be issued, despite being quite vocal about it. That said, it does insist that if Apple doesn't get a response, Apple should bear the risk that some or all of its evidence may not come through on time.