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Oakland, CA - A California federal judge deciding whether Apple complied with her ban on App Store anti-steering rules ordered Apple for a second time Friday to produce documents, telling Apple's counsel "the whole point" is to get documents relevant to Apple's decision-making regarding its new 27% fee "and you didn't do it."

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers' comments came at the start of the latest day in a high-stakes evidentiary hearing in Oakland into whether Apple Inc. has complied with her 2021 ruling that banned Apple from blocking developers from directing consumers to third-party websites outside Apple's App Store to pay for goods and services.

The injunction was issued following a bench trial in Epic Games Inc.'s landmark fight with the tech giant over the App Store's 30% commissions on in-app purchases. Epic, which makes popular video games like Fortnite, claimed Apple's rules and commissions violated antitrust laws and unfairly kept competing app stores off Apple devices.

However, the judge mostly rejected Epic's antitrust arguments, except for its challenges to Apple's anti-steering rules. She issued an injunction, and after an appeals court affirmed her decision, Epic accused Apple of creating new anticompetitive fees to circumvent the court's injunction.

In response, Judge Gonzalez Rogers has held an evidentiary hearing into Epic's allegations that kicked off in early May.

Over the course of a multiday witness examination, the judge repeatedly ordered Carson Oliver, senior director of business management of Apple's App Store, to hand over to the court and Epic's counsel all of his written communications and notes on Apple's decision to impose a new 27% fee after her injunction, including any notes he took during the meetings, his email exchanges on the topic, and any correspondence that occurred on Slack and iMessage about it.

But on Friday, Epic's counsel, Gary A. Bornstein of Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP, said that Apple has only produced a narrow set of emails, Slack and iMessage exchanges. Bornstein said it's clear from those documents that Apple executives used software called Quip — which he described as a project management repository — to communicate and take notes on the new fees, but the company never produced any Quip documents.

Apple's counsel, Mark A. Perry of Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, defended the company's document production and noted that Epic never requested discovery before the evidentiary hearing.

Perry also noted that Apple has produced hundreds of emails and text exchanges in response to the judge's orders, but said defense counsel understood her orders to be limited to emails, iMessage and Slack.