Apple requests Android source code documents from Google in ongoing Samsung patent suit (update: Apple wins)

Update: Bloomberg reports Apple has now won an order granting its request for Google to provide more information about its process of turning over documents in an ongoing lawsuit with Samsung:

U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal in San Jose, California, ordered Google within two days 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. Google had argued the collection of information would be too burdensome.

“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,” Grewal wrote in his order.

Bloomberg reports that Apple has requested Google turn over documents related to Android’s source code in an ongoing patent-infringement lawsuit with Samsung in California. According to the report, Apple took issue with Google’s process of turning over requested pretrial documents claiming Google is “improperly withholding information” and that Android “provides much of the accused functionality” in the infringement claims related to several of Samsung’s Galaxy products:

“It’s a question of transparency,” Mark Lyon, a lawyer for Apple, told Grewal yesterday, referring to the documents. “We have concerns that they’re not doing a full search.”

Matthew Warren, a lawyer for Google who also represents Samsung, told Grewal that Apple made a “strategic decision” in filing its case “to keep Google off the complaint.”

Warren argued that Google, as a third-party to the case, doesn’t have the same rights regarding “reciprocal discovery” and that agreeing to Apple’s request could lead to “future discovery that we don’t think they’re entitled to,” giving Apple “ideas about how to proceed that they wouldn’t have had.”