In May, the trial of Apple and Epic Games will begin. On the eve of the meeting, the parties announced a list of possible witnesses. Among them are the heads of companies Tim Cook and Tim Sweeney, as well as other top managers and a number of former employees.According to TechCrunch, the witness lists were submitted to the court at the end of last week.
All of them will attend the meeting in person.
Apple’s main witness will be Tim Cook, who will be available for questioning for a total of 2 hours and 10 minutes. The list also includes App Store Vice President Matt Fischer, Senior Vice President of software Development Craig Federighi, as well as Apple advisor Phil Schiller, who will be available to testify for 11 hours.
From Epic Games, Tim Sweeney and Vice President Mark Rein will perform. According to Bloomberg, the company will also subpoena several witnesses from the outside. Among them are former head of iOS software development Scott Forstall, former Apple head of Developer Relations Ron Okamoto, and former head of App Store quality control service Phillip Shoemaker.
TechCrunch also reports that other witnesses in court will be executives from Microsoft, Facebook and NVIDIA (however, their names are not called).
“We are confident that this case will prove that Epic intentionally violated the agreement solely in order to increase its revenue, which led to the removal of [Fortnite] from the App Store,” Apple said in a recent statement.
“The voices of developers speaking out against Apple and its anti-competitive practices have become louder. We are not alone in this battle and we look forward to our case helping to increase competition in terms of app distribution and payments to developers,” Epic Games said.
Recall that the conflict between the two companies arose in August last year. Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store after developers tried to add to the project the ability to pay for in-game content bypassing the store. After that, Epic Games sued Apple, and since then both companies have managed to exchange counterclaims and file numerous petitions in court. Fortnite on iOS is still unavailable.
The trial will officially begin on May 3.