Judge Lucy H. Koh, has ruled that a class action suit against Apple regarding lost iMessages may not proceed. The judge, known for her oversight of the Apple versus Samsung patent trials, ruled that members of the suit lacked standing because they were not hurt by any “contractual breach or interference” when they shifted to an Android phone from the iOS, and kept the existing phone number.
The suit alleged that when a user switched to an Android phone (or any other non-iOS device), that text messages from people with iPhones to the new phone were lost. Apple’s iMessage, when a phone number and Apple ID are conjoined, prefers sending messages through the iMessage service, rather than as a SMS message. The suit was launched before Apple developed a tool for switchers away from the iOS ecosystem to divorce phone numbers from an Apple ID.
In court documents originally filed in discovery, Apple says it never asserted that the Messages app or the iMessage service would recognize when an iPhone user switched to a different platform. “Apple takes customer satisfaction extremely seriously, but the law does not provide a remedy when, as here, technology simply does not function as plaintiff subjectively believes it should,” the company adds.
