A piece today suggests that big tech lawyers for Apple, Amazon, Google and other industry giants are not only failing to properly advise their clients, but are “actively encouraging” them to break the law.The piece suggests that one reason Apple was rebuked by the judge in the Epic Games lawsuit was that its lawyers encouraged the company to abuse legal privilege … To understand the basis of this argument, we need to quickly recap on what happened in lawsuit filed against the company by Epic Games.Apple mostly won – but the company aggressively resisted complying in the one area where it lost.
The iPhone maker said that if it had to allow in-app purchases to be made outside the App Store, it would still demand the same net commission after payment processing fees.This negated the clear intent of the judge’s ruling.Apple claimed that its motivation for this decision for this decision was not financial.
The judge in the case strongly implied that she didn’t believe this, and ordered the company to hand over all its internal documents relating to the decision.When Apple claimed it had not been able to comply by the deadline, a second judge said he too thought the company was lying.The original judge subsequently said a senior Apple exec lied under oath, and has referred the matter for criminal investigation.
WSJ piece blames the lawyers Apple had originally withheld thousands of documents on the basis that they were ‘privileged’ – that is, relating to discussions between the company and its lawyers.The confidentiality of discussions between a client and their lawyer are protected by law, while internal discussions between company execs are not.In the Epic case, Apple initially claimed that many thousands of internal documents were privileged, but later admitted they weren’t when the judge demanded closer examination of the claims.
The suggests that this was likely the result of poor advice from Apple’s lawyers – and that the same is true of those advising other tech giants.The reason, suggests an antitrust expert, is that these attorneys are making “mind-boggling” sums of money from their clients, so are motivated to protect them at all costs – and face few consequences when caught.9to5Mac’s Take We’ve been arguing for many years now that Apple is just storing up future trouble for itself when it gives the middle finger to regulators and judges.
It is certainly not skating to where the legal puck is headed.That it let things reach the point of lying under oath is just insane.If Apple is indeed getting poor advice from its lawyers, there’s an obvious solution to that problem.
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