Friday’s oral argument in Epic Games v. Apple will be postponed due to a panel member’s unexpected absence, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a filing Saturday (docket 21-16695). Epic Games sued Apple in August 2020 challenging Apple’s app store dominance, in-app purchasing practices and a dispute related to Apple’s 30% app store fee. The court is working to schedule a new date.

Google has “irretrievably” destroyed “an unknown but undoubtedly significant number of communications by its employees about relevant business conversations, including on topics at the core of this litigation,” said a motion for sanctions Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco (docket 3:21-cv-05227) in the multistate lawsuit alleging the Google Play Store is anticompetitive. Google permanently deletes Google Chats content every 24 hours -- “and did so even after this litigation commenced,” after plaintiffs “repeatedly inquired about why those chats were missing” from Google’s discovery materials, said the motion. “Google’s failure to comply with its preservation obligations has prejudiced” the plaintiffs and is “sanctionable” under federal rules, it said. The motion asks the court to instruct the jury “that it may or must presume” that the destroyed information “was unfavorable to Google. “Any suggestion that we haven’t preserved and produced responsive documents in this lawsuit is simply wrong," emailed a Google spokesperson Monday. "We’re looking forward to making our case in court and we’re confident that we'll prevail in this unnecessary discovery dispute." Three dozen states and the District of Columbia sued Google in July 2021, alleging the company has taken steps to close the Android ecosystem from competition and “insert itself as the middleman between app developers and consumers.”

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Francisco granted the FTC and Meta's Oct. 13 joint administrative motion to hold their hearing Friday via Zoom. Lawyers for both sides who will participate in the hearing asked that it be converted to virtual-only because they all are located on the East Coast. The hearing is on the FTC’s Sept. 9 motion to strike some of Meta’s affirmative defenses (docket 5:22-cv-04325) on grounds that they fail to meet “minimum pleading standards, or are subject to heightened pleading standards, which they also necessarily fail to meet.” The FTC is suing to block Meta’s Within Unlimited buy on antitrust grounds.

The U.S. District Court in San Jose should dismiss the FTC’s amended antitrust complaint seeking to block Meta’s acquisition of Within Unlimited, Meta argued in a filing Thursday in 5:22-CV-04325 (see 2210110015). The agency’s complaint relies on speculation about what Meta might have done had it attempted to enter the virtual fitness market with its own product instead of purchasing an alleged competitor, the company said. The agency makes assumptions that Within would have competed “harder” based on fear of Meta’s entry. The agency fails to present facts establishing a “concentrated market with high barriers to entry,” said Meta.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit should compel documents refuting the FTC’s claims that social audio apps don’t compete with Meta platforms like Facebook, Meta argued Wednesday in docket 1:20-cv-03590. Meta seeks assistance in gathering documents from Alpha Exploration, which owns Clubhouse, an audio-based messaging app with millions of users. Meta served the company a subpoena seeking documents it said are “highly relevant to the FTC’s allegations that Clubhouse and similar applications do not compete with Meta.” Meta noted Clubhouse amassed millions of users within the first year after launching in March 2021, which refutes the FTC’s claim that Meta’s conduct has resulted in substantial barriers to entry. Clubhouse in its response said Meta has identified more than 100 competitors and served them with “highly burdensome and invasive subpoenas.” Clubhouse must “conserve its finite resources in a down market” and is seeking a cost-sharing agreement with Meta to produce the documents. Clubhouse is willing to search “custodial emails if Meta agrees in advance to pay for it,” Clubhouse said. Meta has incentive to create “more burden for companies it views as competitors,” the company said. Meta is seeking documents related to Clubhouse user engagement metrics. Clubhouse claims some of the documents are “competitively sensitive.” Meta argued the court shouldn’t shift any costs until after Clubhouse produces documents, shows costs were “significant” and demonstrates the shared costs are reasonable.

U.S. District Judge David Hale in Louisville signed an order Tuesday extending to Nov. 11 Verizon's deadline to answer a complaint from the former supplier of retail store cabinets to a wireless reseller in Tennessee that claims Verizon caused “significant damage” to its business when it forced the reseller to source its store fixtures from another supplier. Midwest Cabinet Suppliers before 2019 “had an ongoing and long-standing business relationship” with Cellular Sales of Knoxville (CSK) under which it manufactured and installed cabinets for all of CSK’s retail stores in numerous U.S. locations, said Midwest’s complaint Sept. 19 in U.S. District Court in Louisville (docket 3:22-cv-00493). Verizon required CSK to sign a new contract in late 2018 to maintain its standing as an authorized Verizon reseller, it said. The contract amounted to an “illegal tying agreement” in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act because it required CSK to purchase cabinets exclusively from a competitive supplier, it said. Verizon’s actions caused Midwest “the loss of thousands of dollars of revenue” and “the near total destruction” of its business with CSK, said the complaint. Based on Verizon’s “tortious interference with its business relationship with CSK, Midwest is entitled to recover from Verizon appropriate compensatory damages,” it said.

The FTC filed an administrative motion Friday asking the U.S. District Court in San Jose to consider whether its amended complaint to block Meta’s proposed Within Unlimited buy should be sealed. “Certain portions” of the FTC’s amended complaint contain confidential information the agency obtained from Meta and Within during its “non-public investigation” of Meta’s proposed acquisition, said the motion (docket 5:22-cv-04325).