TECH NEWS – The Cupertino-based company got away with a lawsuit over iCloud, but a class-action lawsuit has taken its place over another practice…

The free version of iCloud has always offered 5GB of storage in the cloud, and anyone who wants more can pay for the extra space. This approach is not going to change any time soon, and many are following suit, although some are offering more space (Google, for example, offers 15 GB). However, some iCloud users were not happy with the free storage and filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple.

The problem is that the court swept it off the table! Despite claiming that the public was being tricked by Apple into paying for more storage and that the company was engaging in anti-competitive practices, not to mention breach of contract, the Law360 paywalled article shared by Apple Insider reports that the entire lawsuit was built on the premise that users were unhappy with the 5GB of space and that it was impossible to reduce iCloud usage… and that wasn’t enough to bring a serious case against the US tech company!

It turns out that two of the plaintiffs were allegedly still using Apple’s free 5GB tier, so they could still get by without paying for that much storage. The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit dismissed the case, finding that the plaintiffs had failed to prove their case, and not for the first time (the previous dismissal was in May 2022). The plaintiffs were given three opportunities to amend their case to point out Apple’s shortcomings with the iCloud service. While these individuals have had little luck convincing the court that the Cupertino company is up to no good, Apple is fighting another lawsuit related to its cloud storage…

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that developers in the UK have filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the company’s 30% profit margin is anti-competitive and a tax on the country’s tech industry that encourages it. If the company loses the case, the 13,000 developers would have to pay a total of £785 million. The UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal has given the green light for the case to proceed, rejecting Apple’s arguments to block the case. The case is being led by UK competition law professor Sean Ennis.

Apple, along with Google, is currently being investigated by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for dominance in the mobile market. The company was also criticized by Microsoft earlier this year over its commission fee, which it said made it impossible to effectively monetize its cloud gaming offering on iOS. In August, the CMA closed its investigation into Apple’s in-app payment system, which looked into whether the company had breached the EU’s new Digital Marketplace (DMA) rules. Around the same time, Apple updated its terms of service in the EU to allow developers to connect to external payment systems.

What will come of this?

Source: WCCFTech, Apple Insider, Gamesindustry, Bloomberg