Joe Rossignol
This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that Apple illegally deceived customers into paying for iCloud storage, according to a lawsuit. The ruling was reported by Law360.
The lawsuit alleged that Apple deceived customers into buying iCloud-enabled devices by misleading them into believing they could easily keep their iCloud storage usage below the free 5GB limit. In reality, the plaintiffs alleged that users quickly exceeded that limit and then had to pay for increasingly expensive iCloud storage plans. In the US, these plans range from 50GB for $0.99 per month to 12TB for $59.99 per month.
In the ruling, three Ninth Circuit judges said the plaintiffs failed to prove that it was “virtually impossible” for them to reduce their storage or that they would inevitably be forced to pay for iCloud storage. In fact, two of the named plaintiffs were still stuck at the 5GB tier. The judges added that customers have the option to turn off iCloud at any time.
The case was dismissed by the US District Court for Northern California back in May 2022, and an appeal to the Ninth Circuit has now been denied. Barring the highly unlikely event that the plaintiffs are able to successfully petition the US Supreme Court to hear the case, the litigation is now over. However, Apple still faces other iCloud-related lawsuits in both the US and UK, as complaints about the 5GB tier persist.
Apple launched iCloud in 2011, and since then the service has been available with 5GB of free storage. By today's standards, 5GB is a small amount of storage, and Apple's refusal to increase the free limit has long been a point of contention.
Tag: iCloudRelated forum: Apple Music, Apple Pay/Card, iCloud, Fitness+[ 195 comments ]
