And at the center of it all is Microsoft’s profit-and-loss analysis for the Xbox hardware, which no one on the Apple side has seen. It’s worth remembering here that Apple and Microsoft have been locked in heated competition for decades now, and while Apple doesn’t have a product competing specifically against the Xbox, the broader companies are tied up in a delicate balance of fierce competition and business cooperation. As a result, Microsoft really does not want to give Apple sensitive financial data about the Xbox — and Apple sees the P&L statement as a way to punch back at Microsoft for getting involved in the App Store fight in the first place.
A big part of the legal fight is over which documents can be used in the trial and which parts of those documents can be blacked out to conceal trade secrets or other information the companies would rather not get out. The companies’ lawyers have been going back and forth on these tiny details for months; it’s just what lawyers do.
But it’s fair to say this case has been unusually chaotic — either because of the remote nature of the trial or the sheer volume of different companies involved. A lot of information has come out of the discovery in this case, and not all of it was supposed to. Now, Microsoft is caught between giving up information that could help in court and giving up business secrets to a longtime rival. Microsoft wants Epic to win this case, and it’s willing to talk about Xbox profitability if it helps to make that happen. But giving up that information in open court might be a bridge too far.