After deciding that Epic Games’ Australian complaint against Apple can move forward, the country’s Federal Court on Friday set a conditional trial start date of November 2022, media reports said.
According to ZDNet, Justice Nye Perram said he did not want to delay the proceedings any further, given the case has already faced two appeals, with one of them putting the case on hold.
The Epic-Apple case stayed in April as Perram wanted to first see the outcome of a similar lawsuit being heard in the US before continuing with the Australian case.
Epic Games then appealed that decision and won, which allowed it to recommence the case. The report said that three Federal Court judges granted the appeal as they found the case involves fundamental public interest issues in relation to conduct undertaken in an Australian sub-market.
During a case management hearing, Apple legal representative Conor Bannan asked about the potential for another stay of the proceedings, but Perram quickly set that aside, saying the iPhone maker would have to submit a formal application for him to even consider another stay of proceedings.
“I don’t think I should really do through the back door something which really ought to be done through the front door and I think if you want to apply to stay the proceedings, you’re going to need to make a formal application for that,” Perram said.
“In the absence of such application, I’m not going to delay the proceedings,” he added.
Referring to the stop-and-start history of the case, Perram then ordered a conditional trial date of November 28, 2022.
