iSue: 5 Of Biggest Apple Lawsuits Of All Time
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Apple products may be the coolest gadgets of our time, but with great power comes great responsibility. The fact that the tech corporation plays such a major part in most people’s lives (via Apple calendars, Icloud, etc) means eventually, there will be a case when their over personalized system becomes an issue. That was the case for New York teen Ousmane Bah who is suing Apple for 1 Billion dollars claiming that a facial recognition system falsely connected him to a series of thefts, which caused him great humiliation, a missed midterm exam and hours traveling to different states to prove he was innocent.
Bah named the Apple store in Cupertino and Security Industry Specialists in Culver City as the defendants in his federal lawsuit. The 18-year old has been charged in multiple jurisdictions, including Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. Although three of the cases have been dropped, the one in New Jersey is still pending.
FOX 5 News reports:
The suit points out that since 2017, Apple did away with its “home” button on the iPhone X, and has promoted that is facial recognition software is much more secure and has since replaced the fingerprint touch ID. But errors do occur, and once Bah was tied to the wrong face, his lawyer wrote that he had “no recourse to correct the error.”
Hopefully, Bah is awarded the reparations he deserves. But he’s not the only one with the gull to file a suit against a corporate giant like Apple. Hit the flip to check out some of the biggest lawsuits Apple has ever faced.
FBI vs. Apple
After the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, the FBI sued Apple to forcibly unlock the suspect’s iPhone, asserting that the agency had exhausted all options before taking legal action. The bureau ended up reportedly paying an external vendor to break into the device.
Nokia vs. Apple
In 2016, Nokia filed a number of lawsuits against Apple Inc for violating 32 technology patents. The suit covered patents for displays, user interfaces, software, antennas, chipsets and video coding. Apple wound up having to pay up in this case — 2 billion dollars to be exact.
Apple Users vs. Apple
In 2017, folks noticed that their Iphone was moving slower than usual. To people’s surprise, Apple admitted to slowing down older iPhone models to keep them running longer. Stefan Bogdanovich and Dakota Speas brought a class action lawsuit against the tech company, claiming they never requested consent from them to “slow down their iPhones” and that they “suffered interferences to their iPhone usage due to the intentional slowdowns.” Ultimately, Apple offered to reduce the cost of acquiring a new phone to $29.
China vs. Apple
Fortune.com: “Baili, a Chinese device maker, has sued Apple (AAPL, -0.61%) for allegedly copying its smartphone design in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. A Chinese court recently granted Baili an injunction that would have forced Apple to remove the iPhone 6 line from store shelves. However, Apple quickly appealed the ruling to a higher court, which will allow it to continue selling the iPhone 6 line until that court makes its own ruling on the case.” As a result, some of Apple’s iPhones have been banned from sale in China.
Apple Corps. vs Apple Inc.
Moneyinc.com: “Apple Inc. was faced a trademark suit from Apple Corps, the company that Beatles record label regarding the word “Apple” and its association with music for a period of 30 years. They settled the case but Apple but faced with new suits from Apple Corps after it launched new features that infringed on earlier agreements. The suit was finally concluded in 2007 after they agreed that Apple Inc. would own most of the usage of the word Apple, while Apple Corps would be re-allocated a few licenses.”
