Sony suffered its first defeat in the current microsoft activision case because the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided that you must disclose your PlayStation exclusivity agreements with third parties.
FTC says PlayStation exclusivity deals relevant to Microsoft Activision lawsuit
To fight the FTC’s lawsuit over its impending acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft subpoenaed Sony demanding a long list of documents it considered relevant to the case. This included PlayStation executives’ personal files and third-party exclusivity agreements.
In response, Sony filed a motion to quash or limit the subpoena, accusing Microsoft of “blatant harassment”. Unfortunately for Sony, the FTC judge generally disagrees.
“The nature and scope of SIE’s content licensing agreements are relevant to the lawsuit’s allegations regarding exclusivity agreements between video game console developers and video game developers and publishers,” the FTC said.
In response to Sony’s argument that reviewing decades of commercial files and records is an unnecessary burden, the FTC reduced the date range of required documents. Microsoft had requested registrations from January 1, 2012. The FTC limited this to January 1, 2019.
What the FTC granted Sony, however, was its request to suspend employee performance reviews and evaluations. Microsoft said this personal data could “frankly” discuss what information it needs. The FTC disagreed.