Apple urged a San Jose federal judge to toss out a proposed shareholder class action accusing it of double fraud: first by hyping Siri’s artificial intelligence upgrades beyond reality at a June 2024 event, and second by misleading investors about its compliance with the Epic Games injunction on App Store commissions.
In Wednesday’s filing, Apple argued there’s zero evidence executives knew — when touting AI progress — that two key advanced Siri features would slip far beyond expectations, let alone that the delays would dent iPhone 16 sales.
The injunction required Apple to allow app developers to provide users with external links for purchases, so developers wouldn’t owe 30% commissions for purchases in its App Store. The judge overseeing that case rebuked Apple for creating a new system that charged a 27% commission on some external sales. A federal appeals court partially reversed her sanctions in December.
Jonathan Stempel for Reuters:
The company delayed some Siri upgrades the following March, and Chief Executive Tim Cook said two months later that developing a “more personal” Siri was “taking a bit longer than we thought.”
Apple also said it provided no assurance that its procedures designed to comply with a 2021 injunction, in a case brought by Epic Games, to let app users pay developers directly rather than have the company charge the developers hefty commissions would be foolproof.
“It is no secret that Apple faced challenges and weathered ups and downs in its stock price in 2025, like many major companies,” Apple said. “But plaintiff takes a massive and unsupported leap by claiming that securities fraud caused the temporary price drops.”
Lawyers for shareholders led by South Korea’s National Pension Service, the world’s third largest pension fund with close to $1 trillion of assets, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s a quintessential Apple defense: no intent, no foresight, no case. You can’t definitively prove why a stock price declined. It just as likely could have been that it finally began to dawn on investors that the company has been led by a visionless bore for a decade too long or for some other reason(s).
Still, we predicted lawsuits very early on:
False advertising is false advertising. Even Tim Cook’s wheezing vaporware factory – or, more likely, its lawyers – can figure that out.
Class action lawsuits by iPhone 16 buyers to commence in 3, 2… – MacDailyNews, March 10, 2025, “Apple pulls iPhone 16 ad touting nonexistent Apple Intelligence-powered Siri features”
The Apple Intelligence vaporware [is] false advertising, fraud, and lies. Those will be the basis for class action lawsuits from iPhone, iPad, and Mac customers soon enough. And Apple will deserve them all. – MacDailyNews, March 14, 2025, “Apple removes Siri from John Giannandrea, hands it over to Mike Rockwell”
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Apple’s legal team has been extremely lacking since the win in the Franklin case well over four decades ago. The stupid actions (or inactions) by Apple’s legal team came to fore with the asinine “look and feel” lawsuit. It really wasn’t about “look and feel” but contract violation, but Apple’s inept legal team allowed Microsoft to make the court think the core of the lawsuit was about “look and fee” and thus got the court to rule against Apple.
I’m not sure they could successfully argue their way out of a wet paper bag.
Their huge loss in the claimed “most favored nation clause” case was due to true stupidity. It was a “best customer clause”. Who uses that type of clause in a huge number of contracts every year? The U.S. Government. (I’ve been involved in such contracts with those types of “best customer clauses” with the U.S. Government going on 40 years now.) If such a clause is illegal then the U.S. Government is guilty of illegal contracts too. But, Apple’s team was truly inept in not explaining that to the court.
There have been many, many cases where Apple should have won but lost purely due to Apple’s legal team’s ineptness. If I had been in charge I’d have fired them ALL many years ago.