In a collective lawsuit related to suspicions of intentional performance degradation of the Apple iPhone smartphone in the United States, some domestic consumers have won a partial victory.
On Dec. 6, the 12-3 Civil Division of the Seoul High Court ruled in favor of seven consumers in the appeal trial of a damages claim lawsuit against Apple Korea. The court ordered Apple to pay each plaintiff 70,000 won (US$53.23).
Apple has faced allegations of intentionally slowing down device performance through updates to the iPhone operating system, iOS. On this day, the trial court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims that the update process constituted malicious program distribution or caused damage to iPhone devices.
In the previous trial, the first-instance court stated, “It is difficult to see that the performance adjustment feature necessarily has a negative impact or causes inconvenience to users.” At that time, all the combined cases in the first instance resulted in over 62,000 consumers being defeated.
Among the consumers who faced defeat in the first instance, seven appealed and secured partial victory on this day. The second-instance court pointed out, “Even if the purpose of the update was to prevent the device from shutting down, it restricted the performance of central processing units (CPUs) and other components.”
The court also stated, “Apple has an obligation to sufficiently explain to purchasers that they can choose to install updates, but it violated this obligation. Consumers have suffered mental harm due to the infringement of their right to choose.”