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It's only the second day of Epic and Apple going head-to-head in the courts, and it's already clear that the United States court system was not prepared for the cocktail of a high-profile case centered around an industry that is secretive often to the point of absurdity. Add in struggles with COVID-19 precautions and a call-in audience of rowdy gamers, and this trial is shaping up to be very interesting indeed.
Already, there's been an ongoing kerfuffle between lawyers, third parties, and the judge regarding games leaks occurring via court documents. To generalize a bit, exhibits submitted as evidence in court are usually a matter of public record, unless a document is "sealed," meaning it is only visible to a select group of people in court to whom it is relevant. This might be done for a number of reasons — in the case of Epic v. Apple, it's a matter of concern because a lot of the evidence includes internal documents from video game companies that might reference trade secrets, unannounced projects, and so forth. Unfortunately, it's causing a lot of problems for everyone in this particular trial.
It's unclear exactly who dropped the ball in Epic v. Apple, but the trial as a whole keeps hitting stumbling blocks because third-parties are complaining that their classified documents are being leaked to the public via a public folder where all the exhibits are being submitted for perusal. The problem was first apparent yesterday, when over 100 documents submitted to the folder at the start of the day were deleted without explanation, then (mostly) slowly reinstated over the rest of the day. One of the biggest drops of confidential information was caught by The Verge, showing that Sony really, really hated the idea of cross-platform play on its consoles — a line of questioning that was touched upon during Sweeney's cross-examination yesterday, though not in as much detail..
The problems continued today. On the bright side (for gaming companies anyway), whoever is in charge of releasing documents seems to have slowed down a bit and is waiting to make sure they aren't confidential first, though the judge pointed out right out of the gate that it was pointless to re-seal documents that were already leaked. But now there's a new problem: the court keeps getting surprised by on-the-spot, third-party requests for confidentiality. In one amusing exchange early in the day, a piece of evidence was submitted by Apple with the intent of questioning Sweeney about it. However, proceedings were paused as Epic's lawyers pushed back, saying there was confidential information in the document that Epic's third-party partners didn't want either spoken out loud (where anyone listening on a public line could hear it) or entered into public record.
www.ign.com
Already, there's been an ongoing kerfuffle between lawyers, third parties, and the judge regarding games leaks occurring via court documents. To generalize a bit, exhibits submitted as evidence in court are usually a matter of public record, unless a document is "sealed," meaning it is only visible to a select group of people in court to whom it is relevant. This might be done for a number of reasons — in the case of Epic v. Apple, it's a matter of concern because a lot of the evidence includes internal documents from video game companies that might reference trade secrets, unannounced projects, and so forth. Unfortunately, it's causing a lot of problems for everyone in this particular trial.
It's unclear exactly who dropped the ball in Epic v. Apple, but the trial as a whole keeps hitting stumbling blocks because third-parties are complaining that their classified documents are being leaked to the public via a public folder where all the exhibits are being submitted for perusal. The problem was first apparent yesterday, when over 100 documents submitted to the folder at the start of the day were deleted without explanation, then (mostly) slowly reinstated over the rest of the day. One of the biggest drops of confidential information was caught by The Verge, showing that Sony really, really hated the idea of cross-platform play on its consoles — a line of questioning that was touched upon during Sweeney's cross-examination yesterday, though not in as much detail..
The problems continued today. On the bright side (for gaming companies anyway), whoever is in charge of releasing documents seems to have slowed down a bit and is waiting to make sure they aren't confidential first, though the judge pointed out right out of the gate that it was pointless to re-seal documents that were already leaked. But now there's a new problem: the court keeps getting surprised by on-the-spot, third-party requests for confidentiality. In one amusing exchange early in the day, a piece of evidence was submitted by Apple with the intent of questioning Sweeney about it. However, proceedings were paused as Epic's lawyers pushed back, saying there was confidential information in the document that Epic's third-party partners didn't want either spoken out loud (where anyone listening on a public line could hear it) or entered into public record.
Epic vs. Apple Shows the Courts Were Not Prepared for the Games Industry's Obsessive Secrecy - IGN
It's only the second day of Epic and Apple going head-to-head, and it's already clear that the United States court system was not prepared for the overly secretive gaming industry.
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