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Legal
US judge allows lawsuit on Apple/AT&T deal to proceed
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 13 July 2010
A judge has given the all clear for a class action lawsuit relating to the AT&T and Apple iPhone deal to proceed to court.
The 2007 lawsuit claims that Apple breached US competition laws with its exclusivity deal with AT&T regarding the sale of the iPhone in America. The crux of the case centres on allegations that the IT and phone firm implied their exclusivity deal would only run for two years when, in fact, they’d entered into a five year agreement.
I think the claim is basically saying that people who bought an iPhone when they first went on sale in the US were led to believe that after two years they could take their device to another phone network. That, of course, was never so.
AT&T argue that they never hid the fact that their deal with Apple would run for five years, and that even if they had, there wouldn’t be a case against either company under competition law.
But a US judge seemingly thinks that the claimants have enough of a case to let the lawsuit go to court. As a class action, if the lawsuit were to be successful, any American owning an iPhone could claim what ever damages were awarded to the claimants, presumably court permission to take their iPhone to another mobile network after two years.
I suspect AT&T are right in their viewpoint that this is a rather weak case, but given Apple bashing is becoming more fashionable of late, it will be interesting to see how this one turns out should it actually get a court hearing.
