With the administrative law proceeding that sees Microsoft face off against the FTC over the $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the parties are scrambling to line up their weapons for the battle.
Yet, other parties are being involved, and among them, there's Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Recently, the FTC petitioned to investigate the deals with Ubisoft and Sony, and the administrative law judge granted the motion with a number of caveats. Now, Microsoft's counsel wants to get their hands on more internal details from Sony to help its case.
According to a new document published by the FTC, Sony provided a "cheny-picked 52-document" fewer than half of which actually relate to the agreement between the company and Microsoft.
After seeing these documents and something else that is unfortunately redacted, Microsoft subpoenaed SIE seeking further documents related to the Microsoft-Sony Agreement and the Microsoft-Ubisoft Agreement.
The aim of the subpoena was to gather a "more balanced and complete set of materials" as Microsoft argues that Sony cherry-picked the documents it presented to support the FTC's case.
Microsoft wants a search to be performed within the correspondence of six people within Sony, using four specific search strings (which haven't been disclosed) within a certain timeframe.
The six individuals affected would be Jim Ryan, President & CEO, Stephanie Burns, Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Roxana Niktab, Senior Director of Legal, Greg Mccurdy, Senior Director, Competition & Regulatory Affairs, Phil Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Head of Global Partner Development & Relations, and Christian Svensson, Senior Global Account Manager.
Microsoft aims to showcase what Sony's internal assessment of the deal it signed was, and documents assessing whether to enter into an agreement with Microsoft, the potential effects of that agreement, or how to message it, among other things.
So far, Sony has opposed this proposal, which is why Microsoft is petitioning for it to be enforced.
Incidentally, Sony's corporate witnesses will have their deposition for this case on January 17.
It appears that the deals with Ubisoft and Sony are becoming a central focus of this issue.
Just yesterday, we learned that Microsoft and the FTC are quarreling over the extent of documents and testimonies the house of Xbox has to provide about the deal with Ubisoft.
Today, the judge agreed to extend the deadline for Microsoft to respond to FTC's demands to January 2.
While the acquisition has been closed, and Microsoft is already at work to further integrate Activision, Blizzard, and King within its chain of command, the FTC has not given up the fight.
If the regulator were to prevail within its administrative law court, it could seek a divestiture, albeit the legal standards to achieve that would be very high. We'll have to continue to wait and see what happens over the next few months.
