The government of South Korea has formally rejected Elon Musk’s appeal for documents from the Kakao super app in xAI’s lawsuit against Apple. Below are the specifics.
### xAI Might Still Have a Chance at Acquiring Some of the Requested Documents
In recent months, xAI’s legal team has dispatched letters to several Asian super app developers, looking for documents that it believes would back its assertion that Apple’s App Store regulations are unjust.
To summarize, here’s the situation: Elon Musk expressed on Twitter that Apple’s collaboration with OpenAI was hindering Grok’s success in the App Store. Shortly after, xAI initiated legal action against both firms.
In the lawsuit, xAI contends that Apple’s App Store regulations unlawfully inhibit super apps, as an effort to stop users from transitioning away from the iPhone. They also assert that Apple’s partnership with OpenAI solidifies this limitation on super apps.
Since taking over Twitter, Musk has concentrated on evolving X into a super app, a category that has experienced significant success in Asia. These applications consolidate services such as ride-hailing, food delivery, payments, streaming, and chat into a single platform, a concept that has yet to achieve genuine traction in Western markets.
In its efforts to persuade Apple to modify the App Store’s rules, xAI has been utilizing an international agreement, known as The Hague Convention, to officially request documents from super app firms located in Asian nations, including Alipay in China and Kakao Corporation in Korea.
In the correspondence, xAI asserts that “Apple’s actions unlawfully restrict competition from ‘super apps,’” and goes on to seek the following:
– Documents related to the financial or strategic importance of selling or distributing Super Apps via various app stores.
– Documents sufficient to demonstrate how revenue is generated from the app in the U.S. and globally.
– Documents concerning the ranking of the app on any Apple App Store List.
– Documents regarding how Super Apps influence smartphone customers’ ability to switch devices.
– Documents sufficient to illustrate plans to integrate and/or current integration of Generative AI technology into the app and the reasoning behind it.
– Documents regarding how Apple’s policies, programs, product modifications, or other limitations have impacted the capacity to distribute or enhance the app.
Additionally, xAI defines “Documents” as:
– Emails and other types of correspondence
– Presentations and slide decks
– Notes and minutes
– Analyses, reports, studies, experiments
– Data, data analyses, and any related working documents, such as Excel spreadsheets or other software or tools
– Agreements
– Product requirement documents, product design documents
– Training and/or onboarding materials
The term “Documents” encompasses any metadata or other embedded information within a document.
This week, the Director of International Affairs at the Supreme Court of the Republic of Korea denied xAI’s request for Kakao-related documents, asserting that it was too broad:
“Reference is made to the above case seeking international judicial assistance to take evidence. We inform you that, pursuant to Article 5 of the HCCH 1970 Evidence Convention, the Letter of Request cannot be executed. Under Article 23 of the Convention, the Republic of Korea has declared that it will not execute Letters of Request issued to obtain documents for pre-trial discovery purposes. Therefore, evidence requests must specify the materials sought in detail rather than broadly stating them as all-related documents.”
In other words, the Korean government isn’t completely dismissing the idea of allowing Kakao to determine whether to provide documents, but xAI will have to be significantly more precise if it wishes for its request to progress.