A federal judge has denied Apple's request for more time to produce documents related to recent App Store changes, maintaining a Monday, September 30 deadline despite the Cupertino giant's claims of an unexpectedly large document count.
Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson rejected Apple's plea for a two-week extension, describing the company's last-minute request as "bad behaviour." Apple now faces the challenge of reviewing and producing what it says are over 1.3 million documents by the Monday deadline.
The document production is part of the ongoing legal battle between Apple and Epic Games, stemming from a 2021 court order that required Apple to allow developers more freedom in collecting payments outside its App Store ecosystem. Epic is now challenging Apple's compliance with that order, alleging "bad-faith" implementation of the required changes.
Judge Hixson expressed scepticism about Apple's sudden realisation of the document count, stating it was "simply not believable" that the company only became aware of the issue in the past two weeks. He suggested that with its "nearly infinite resources," Apple could likely review the documents over a weekend if motivated to do so.