Tim Cook is required to attend the 7-hour testimony in the Apple vs. Epic Games

A judge presiding over the preparatory hearings in the Apple vs. Epic Games has decided that Apple CEO Tim Cook should attend a seven-hour testimonial to testify about how the company sees the App Store competition, reports Gizmodo.

Judge Thomas S. Hixon, a US magistrate, allegedly got the testimony right seven hours after Epic Games proposed eight hours to depose Cook and Apple asked for four. Apple’s concession came after its lawyers tried to quote the “summit doctrine,” which prevents a high-ranking employee from being ousted.

According to Judge Thomas S. Hixon, however, “this dispute is less than it appears.” Hixon writes that the apex doctrine “limits the length of a deposition, rather than barring it altogether”, and that under 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. “Consequently, Hixon’s decision that Cook should be deposed for seven hours.

Judge Hixon also denied Apple’s request to subpoena internal documents related to ‌Epic Games‌’s relationship with Samsung, which Apple claimed would prove that ‌App Store‌ practices are largely consistent with other companies in the industry.

In other words, if Apple can prove that Samsung made similar decisions about how to distribute ‌Epic Games‌ ‘ Fifteen days, then, it can be argued that the company’s antitrust argument is not convincing.

However, Hixon called the request “a deep and peculiar dip” in the agreements between the two companies, which “cannot be a substitute for a larger category of market participants”.

In another development, Hixon ordered Apple to make “best efforts” to produce internal payment processing documents, after criticizing the company as “frustrating and unsatisfactory” in its attempts to delay its launch for Epic.

According Law360, Jay Srinivasan, Apple’s board representative at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, argued that the company’s large size meant that the documents would take time to produce and claimed that “Eppic Games” did not prioritize their orders.

“You are not really offering a solution to this problem,” Judge Hixson told Srinivasan. “You’re just saying, ‘No, we can’t do that.’ This is frustrating and unsatisfactory for me. “

‌Epic Games in August added a Fifteen days update that allowed customers to buy in-game currency directly from fromEpic Games‌, avoiding in-app purchases from Apple. This goes against Apple’s rules, and the change prompted Apple to withdraw the app from the App Store.

After that, “Epic Games” filed a planned lawsuit against Apple, and Apple ended up terminating the picEpic Games developer account de. Fortnite has not been available on iOS devices since August, and as Epic refuses to comply with ‌‌App Store‌‌ rules, there is no way to return to the ‌‌App Store‌‌.

The test between “Epic Games” and Apple is scheduled to begin in May 2021.