It’s hard to believe that it’s only been seven months since Apple started Fifteen days from the App Store and Epic Games has launched its antitrust trap, but you won’t have to wait much longer before the legal machinations behind the scenes give way to the drama of the court – and, it seems, until top executives at Apple and Epic take the stay.
In a lawsuit on Friday night, Apple revealed that CEO Tim Cook, SVP Craig Federighi and former head of marketing and current head of the App Store Phil Schiller intend to testify live and in person in court, among many other provisional witnesses. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and Vice President Mark Rein should also be present, in addition to Facebook’s vice president of games, a Microsoft vice president of Xbox business development and several directors on both sides .
Schiller is expected to spend most of his time on the witness stand, with about 11 hours of interrogation and interrogation, which makes sense. Not only is he responsible for the App Store at the center of the case, but some of his emails and his subordinates are under scrutiny – both for this case and last year’s big tech antitrust hearing, one that ended with the House Judiciary Committee concluding that “Apple has a monopoly power in the mobile app store market.”
Apple says its executives “hope to share with the court”:
Our senior executives are eager to share with the court the very positive impact that the App Store has had on innovation, economies around the world and the customer experience over the past 12 years. We are confident that the case will prove that Epic purposely violated its agreement just to increase its revenue, which resulted in its removal from the App Store. In doing so, Epic circumvented the App Store’s security features in a way that would lead to reduced competition and put consumer privacy and data security at tremendous risk.
The test is due to start provisionally on May 3 and should last for several weeks.
You can find the full list of provisional witnesses and those who will be provisionally deposited below.