{"id":373657,"date":"2017-08-01T00:51:08","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T16:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2017\/07\/31\/apple-denied-dismissal-facetime-ios-6-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2017-08-01T00:51:08","modified_gmt":"2017-07-31T16:51:08","slug":"apple-denied-motion-to-dismiss-lawsuit-related-to-disabling-facetime-on-ios-6-and-earlier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/apple-denied-motion-to-dismiss-lawsuit-related-to-disabling-facetime-on-ios-6-and-earlier\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Denied Motion to Dismiss Lawsuit Related to Disabling FaceTime on iOS 6 and Earlier"},"content":{"rendered":"

United States district judge Lucy Koh has denied Apple’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit related to disabling FaceTime on iOS 6<\/a> and earlier software versions three years ago, allowing the case to proceed as a class action lawsuit. MacRumors obtained court documents of the opinion filed electronically.<\/p>\n

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The lawsuit was filed in February by California resident and iPhone 4 owner Christina Grace, who claims Apple intentionally broke FaceTime on iOS 6 and earlier by disabling a digital certificate that caused the service to cease functioning. California resident Ken Patter was later named as a second plaintiff.<\/p>\n

FaceTime abruptly stopped functioning for all iOS 6 users<\/a> in April 2014. At the time, a spokesperson for Apple said devices may have encountered a “bug” resulting from a device certificate that expired on that date, and the company advised affected users to update to iOS 7 to fix the issue.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, however, alleges that Apple intentionally broke FaceTime, prioritizing its financial interests over its customers.<\/p>\n

Apple used two connection methods when launching FaceTime in 2010: a peer-to-peer method that created a direct connection between two iPhones, allegedly used between 90 and 95 percent of the time, and a relay method that used data servers from content delivery network company Akamai Technologies.<\/p>\n

Apple’s peer-to-peer FaceTime technology was found to infringe on VirnetX’s patents<\/a> in 2012, however, so the company began to shift toward the relay method, which used Akamai’s servers. Within a year, Apple was paying $50 million in fees to Akamai, according to testimony from the VirnetX trial.<\/p>\n

Apple eventually solved the problem by creating new peer-to-peer technology that would debut in iOS 7 in September 2013. But not all users upgraded and, seven months later, the lawsuit alleges that Apple intentionally broke FaceTime on iOS 6 and earlier to stop paying millions of dollars per month to Akamai.<\/p>\n

Testimony from Apple’s 2016 retrial with VirnetX<\/a> indicated that, between April 2013 and September 2013 alone, Apple paid approximately $50 million as a result of FaceTime functioning in relay mode only on iOS 6 and earlier.<\/p>\n

Updating to iOS 7 could be seen as the simple solution in this situation. But the plaintiffs owned an iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s, and cited internet articles that claim updating to iOS 7 significantly impairs the performance and functionality of those smartphones. Their complaint also cited Bluetooth and Wi-Fi issues.<\/p>\n

In its now-denied motion to dismiss, one of Apple’s arguments was that the plaintiffs have no right to uninterrupted, continuous, or error-free FaceTime service under the terms of its iOS Software License Agreement. Apple also said the plaintiffs didn’t experience the iOS 7 issues mentioned on their own iPhones.<\/p>\n

The class action lawsuit would apply to all iPhone 4 or iPhone 4s owners in the United States who, on April 16, 2014, had iOS 6 or an earlier version of the operating system installed on that device. The plaintiffs claim Apple’s actions violate California’s Unfair Competition Law and are seeking a jury trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

United States district judge Lucy Koh has denied Apple’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit related to disabling FaceTime on iOS 6 and earlier software versions three years ago, allowing the case to proceed as a class action lawsuit. MacRumors obtained court documents of the opinion filed electronically. The lawsuit was filed in February by California […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":373658,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[68,69,59,26],"class_list":["post-373657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-macrumors","tag-media","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}