Federal judge Lucy Koh has green-lighted a lawsuit against Apple over its long-standing iMessage issue that causes some former iPhone users to not receive their text messages, reports Reuters. The lawsuit was filed in May by San Jose, California resident Adrienne Moore.
Moore says Apple didn’t properly warn her that she’d quit receiving text messages after switching from an iPhone to a Galaxy S5. There’s no word yet on what kind of damages Moore is asking for, but she is seeking class action status, which would allow others to join the suit.
According to court documents, Apple argues that there’s no law covering technology that “simply does not function as plaintiff subjectively believes it should,” and that it never claimed the iMessage service would be able to recognize when users switched to non-iPhone devices.
Koh disagrees, and will allow Moore the chance to show Apple violated a California unfair competition law, saying “plaintiff does not have to allege an absolute right to receive every text message in order to allege that Apple’s intentional acts have caused a breach of contract.”
Judge Koh’s decision comes, coincidentally, two days after Apple released a new tool to allow ex-iPhone users to deregister their numbers from iMessage. Prior to the launch, the company had offered very little public on what was a widely known and well documented issue.
[Reuters]