Judge rejects class action suit against Apple’s iMessage

A judge on Tuesday ruled in favour of Apple in a lawsuit brought by a former iPhone user who claimed the company's messaging system interfered with delivery of texts after she switched to an Android-based smartphone.

According to plaintiff Adrienne Moore, who filed a complaint in San Jose, California, Apple's iMessage retained text messages sent from other users of Apple devices and would not deliver them on her Samsung phone running on Google's Android operating system.

US district judge Lucy H Koh on Tuesday ruled the case could not proceed as a group lawsuit as it was not clear enough that all proposed members of the suit suffered an inconvenience due to any ''contractual breach or interference'' stemming from the iMessage system.

Even if Moore was correct in arguing iMessage had ''systematic flaws that could result in the disruption of text messaging services, that determination failed to assist the court in determining whether iMessage actually caused the proposed class members to suffer any interference,'' Koh wrote in her ruling.

The ruling comes as a victory for Apple because allowing the case to proceed would have upped the iPhone maker's potential costs in defending the case, and possibly granting plaintiffs leverage to negotiate a deal.

According to the lawsuit, customers who replaced their Apple Devices with non-Apple wireless phones and tablets were ''penalised and unable to obtain the full benefits of their wireless-service contracts.''

The ruling comes as a victory for Apple, as class action status would have opened the floodgates for multiple people to participate, which would have made a loss or settlement all the more costly.

The suit alleged Apple kept text messages sent from its iMessage system to Android users from arriving without notifying either the sender or receiver of the glitch.

With Apple's iMessage text messaging feature, iOS users could send messages without using up their data allowance. However, a problem occurred when people dumped their iOS device and moved to Android.

After the roll out of iMessage in 2011, many former iPhone users and now Android users said texts sent to them using iMessage  ended up in limbo, even though the sender thought they had reached their destination.