Predictably, Sony is doing everything it can to not respond to a Microsoft subpoena that would require it to be honest about the Activision Blizzard acquisition.

The legal drama was first reported by Florian Mueller at FOSS Patents, who notes that Sony is trying a new tactic after trying to delay its response four times: it is now asking the Federal Trade Commission’s Chief Administrative Law Judge D. Michael Chappell to “confidentially … limit or quash Microsoft’s subpoena” and “withdraw as moot its motion for extension of time.”

Microsoft had waived its right to oppose Sony’s first three extension requests, but when Sony tried to delay responding a fourth time, it finally cried foul. So Sony changed its strategy.

And as Mueller points out, Sony isn’t just fighting Microsoft’s subpoena, it’s not complying with an FTC subpoena either.

“First [Sony] asked the FTC to bring this case like no one else did,” he writes. “Then they don’t want to answer questions. It’s possible that Chappell also found that behavior bewildering, and that he had this in mind when he saw Sony’s motion for a fourth extension of time.”

That Sony is on the wrong side of this debate should have been obvious from the start, but its constant stalling of an FTC legal review that it demanded, and its request for confidentiality, is telling.