Google Forced To Give Up Documents In Apple Vs. Samsung Case

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Google has been forced to hand over Android source code documents sought by Apple in an ongoing patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung.

The search giant initially argued that it was not required to give up the documents and that it would be too burdensome to collect them, but U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal in San Jose, California, has given the company two days to give them up.

Google has been ordered to “disclose what terms it’s using to find documents Apple has requested in pretrial information sharing, and to tell Apple which Google employees those documents came from,” Bloomberg reports.

The company first refused Apple’s request and said that collecting the information would be too burdensome. It also tried to argue that as a third-party in the case, it was not required to provide anything. But Grewal pretty much mocked those excuses in his order.

“The court cannot help but note the irony that Google, a pioneer in searching the Internet, is arguing that it would be unduly burdened by producing a list of how it searched its own files,” he wrote, before adding “third party status does not confer a right to obfuscation or obstinacy.”

Apple wants the Android documents as part of its second patent-infringement case against Samsung. The company has stated that Google’s platform is used by all of Samsung’s allegedly infringing products, and that it “provides much of the accused functionality.”

This case covers some of the more recent devices released by Apple and Samsung, including the iPhone 5 and the Galaxy S III, while the first case — which initially saw Apple awarded $1.05 billion in damages — mostly concerned earlier products.