“The lawsuit, which was filed in October 2007, accuses Apple and AT&T of violating antitrust laws, including the Sherman Act, by agreeing to a multi-year deal that locks U.S. iPhone owners into using the mobile carrier,” Keizer reports.
“On Wednesday, the plaintiffs asked U.S. District Court Judge James Ware to compel Apple to produce the source code for the iPhone 1.1.1 software, an update that Apple issued in September 2007,” Keizer reports. “The update crippled iPhones that had been unlocked, or ‘jailbroken,’ so that they could be used with mobile providers other than AT&T. The iPhone 1.1.1 ‘bricked’ those first-generation iPhones that had been hacked, rendering them useless and wiping all personal data from the device.”
“Several days before iPhone 1.1.1 was released, Apple threatened to take action against users who had hacked their handsets, saying that doing so would ‘violate their iPhone software license agreement and void their warranty,'” Keizer reports. “‘Unless Plaintiffs are given access to Version 1.1.1 source code, their ability to prove the size and scope of the Class affected by Version 1.1.1 will be severely compromised and unfairly prejudiced,’ the motion read.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “leesweet” and “Robert S.” for the heads up.]
@ G4Dualie – Beautiful analogy!
Of course, now I’m hungry for some KFC…
Tying is not illegal in and of itself. if it was then it would have been cut down a long time ago thanks to T-Mobile and the Sidekick, Sprint and the Instinct etc.
Tying is only illegal when it is abusive. to be abusive it must be two unrelated items (a cell phone and a carrier are most definitely related since a phone is little good without service) tied in such a way that a strong market power for one item is used to prevent competition for the other. Example. Microsoft attempted to make the inclusion of IE and only IE a condition of an OEM license. A web browser and an operating system are not (according to the courts) related items. Microsoft was using their 90% market share for Windows to cut off competition from Netscape etc for IE. bad boys.
so even without the whole ‘related item’ issue you would have to show that either the iphone or ATT has an overwhelming market power and that the tying was shutting out all over phones/services. not likely to be a winning argument.
and then there is the not so little issue that hacking the iphone to unlock the sim is circumvention of an access system and thus a DMCA violation. had they filed the suit before they committed the crime the courts might be more friendly to them. double if they made the issue simply any company locking a device to a single carrier.
DogGone a scribe: To stop frivolous lawsuits the plaintiff should pay the defendants lawyers costs. That will cut out most of this BS.
How about the plaintiff and their law firm share the cost equally. Then these trolling lawyers will think twice before taking on crap cases. Right now, the lawyers can’t lose: they get paid something either way. And that might also help bring down “East Texas” as the haven of frivolity.
There are many things that are broken about this country that are taking it into a downward spiral. A few key ones off of the top of my head…
#1 The substantial decline in the concept and application of personal responsibility
#2 The lack of accountability (personal or corporate)
#3 A culture that actively discourages and penalizes telling the truth (who admits guilt anymore)
#4 The increase in the attitude of entitlement
#5 The decrease in the overall work ethic
#6 An excessive desire to avoid risk, thereby also limiting the potential for reward
There are others, but this is a reasonable start.
What is odd about such lawsuits is that the judges have the power to throw invalid lawsuits out of court. Clearly this is another nonsense lawsuit that does not require extensive research. It is simply invalid and should have been thrown out.
The result would have been saving massive time and money for everyone concerned EXCEPT the prosecuting lawyers.
IMHO what we have going on is not sucking up to the lawyers by the judges, but instead incredibly ignorance of the field of technology law. I don’t think the judges understand the basic concepts of a EULA. Thus we have all these lawsuits dangling on, in this case for years, when the entire issue could have ended within a day. This was most certainly the case with Psystar as well as this lunatic iPhone case.