Apple and the Justice Department are arguing over how recent the documents in their antitrust case must be, and the answer could add months to a lawsuit already scheduled to run into 2027.
The two sides had agreed on a June 20, 2025 cutoff for Apple's records. Since then, the evidence-gathering phase (called discovery) has been rescheduled to end in late May 2027. In a new court filing, the government's lawyers asked Apple to supply documents created up to 30 days before that date. They said newer records could help show whether the alleged anticompetitive practices are continuing.
Apple objects. It says widening the search would delay the case by several months. The company also put numbers on the work so far: it has reviewed more than 11 million documents and handed over more than two million, covering an 18-year period. That works out to roughly one in five reviewed documents produced, and every extension means another round of review.
Both arguments have some logic. A cutoff that made sense when it was set now leaves a gap of nearly two years before evidence closes. The lawsuit, filed in March 2024, accuses Apple of illegally protecting a smartphone monopoly by restricting competing apps, services and devices. Apple denies that. A case about ongoing conduct is easier to argue with current records, and a stale file gives a defendant room to say things have changed since. The delay figure, though, is Apple's own estimate, and the filing as described gives no independent measure of how much work 30 more days of records would add.
The dispute points to a built-in problem with antitrust cases against fast-moving products. They take years, and any fixed cutoff is either out of date by trial or keeps moving. The court has not ruled, so the open question is whether it picks a later date, holds the old one, or lands somewhere between.