It has been a while since the court battle between Sony and George Hotz began, and both sides are still arguing about what state has jurisdiction in the case. Sony argued that Hotz's use of the PlayStation 3 SDK created a relationship between Sony and Hotz, and that since Sony Computer Entertainment of America is located in California, that's where the case should be heard. Now Hotz and his legal team are arguing that the SDK is owned by Sony Computer Entertainment of Japan, saying that Sony is dragging its feet to prove otherwise.

The case may come down to some fine wording in the SDK's documentation and code, but there's also the question of how much access Sony should have to Hotz's hard drives, and what they're allowed to look for. All this hinges on whether Sony's argument about the use of the SDK would lead a reasonable person to understand they were dealing with a party in California, and Sony seems to be playing games in dealing with the other side of the case.

We support the SDK, we're in California, so...

Hotz's argument is that Sony mislead the courts when it stated the SDK he used on his systems gave Hotz the impression that Sony was a California company. "This Court astutely recognized why searching for presence of the SDK would not be relevant to jurisdictional discovery, yet SCEA represented that it was relevant and necessary because the SDK contains information that SCEA is in California," Hotz' team argued. "The Court permitted such inspection based on SCEA's representations. Mr. Hotz's counsel, while disagreeing, also relied on SCEA's representations. Now it appears that SCEA continues to deliberately misrepresent its position in order to gain the ability to perform a search on Mr. Hotz's drives that otherwise would not have been authorized."

Sony's counsel countered that, of course the SDK creates a relationship between Hotz and Sony, so California has jurisdiction. The proof? Sony Computer Entertainment of America is listed as support! "SCEA is the exclusive distributor of the PS3 System SDK in the United States.... SCEA’s counsel even confirmed in an e-mail to Mr. Kellar, attached hereto as Exhibit 5," Sony's counsel explained. "Specifically, the SDK contains an electronic Reference Tool Instruction Manual that references SCEA and lists the company as Developer Support for the tool. The electronic manual is distributed as part of the SDK within the United States."

Trying to lock this down may be trickier than it seems. Hotz's lawyers would like a copy of the SDK to look through to determine the exact wording included, while Sony is trying to limit access to the SDK by arguing that the lawyers can only see it under NDA, at Sony's offices. Moreover, Sony is arguing that they should be able to look through the entirety of Hotz' hard drives and search his e-mail looking for evidence of communication with parties in California.

This seems to be something of a fishing expedition: Sony says they have jurisdiction in California because of an SDK so they should be able to search Hotz' hard drives for evidence of that SDK, but while they're in there they should also be able to dig through Hotz' e-mails to prove that California has jurisdiction.

"Can you imagine how it feels to know someone is going to be looking through your e-mails in civil litigation to see if any of them are to people in California? That's what Hotz means by overbroad," Groklaw wondered. "But how, pray tell, would the third party know by an e-mail address where someone is? If people use Gmail, for example, there's no identifying IP address even. Maybe he'd just search for the keywords California and CA and various cities."

There are other shenanigans here, such as Sony deliberately sitting on their contribution to a contemplated proposed joint order until a few minutes before midnight the day it was due. "As a result of SCEA’s failure to comply with their own time limitations as established in Judge Spero’s Order, Mr. Hotz was unable to address and rebut SCEA’s arguments in this joint letter.... SCEA’s delay was undue and was in bad faith," an exhibit states. Fun lawyer tricks? There are likely more where that came from.