A lawsuit was filed against Apple by plaintiffs Adam Backhaut, Bouakhay Joy Backhaut and Kenneth Morris who claimed that iMessage was rigged not to deliver messages to Android smartphones. They had switched from an iPhone to Android smartphones in 2012, they alleged that Apple was violating the Federal Wire Tap Act, which Apple denied. The long-standing lawsuit has finally been thrown out today with Apple scoring a complete win.
It was claimed in the lawsuit that Apple wiretaps Android users by first intercepting and then intentionally failing to deliver text messages sent from iPhones to Android smartphones. Apple had asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit when it discovered that two of the plaintiffs had disposed off their iPhones after they had filed the lawsuit against Apple, the company claimed that those plaintiffs were thus unable to demonstrate whether the texts sent to their phone numbers went to either their Apple or Android smartphone.
The judge had previously declined to grant the case class action status, while one of the plaintiffs requested the court to be dismissed as a “named plaintiff” in the case. What their lawsuit merely did was highlight a technical issue for those who switched from iPhone to Android back then, they were caught in the iMessage system, which was known to be unreliable at delivering text messages to Android handsets, a fix for this issue was issued late last year.
U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh head both sides and determined that there was nothing more to this case, and that Apple had not been intentionally doing what it was alleged to be doing, hence the federal judge has ruled to dismiss the case with a mere single-sentence order.