A two-year-long collective lawsuit filed by a group of Korean iPhone users against Apple Inc. wrapped up as the plaintiffs withdrew the case, citing the difficulty of proving the alleged irregularities by the tech company.
Twenty-nine iPhone users filed the complaint in 2011 against Apple Korea Inc. and U.S.-based Apple Inc. insisting that the tech giant had illegally gathered users’ location information in a hidden file “consolidated.db” on the handset.
“It was impossible to acquire evidence for the case, since it was withheld by the defendant,” said a legal representative of the users, adding that they would seek to take different measures down the road.
Industry sources also said the legal battle was a long shot from the beginning, since the users had no access to Apple’s internal data.
The court had asked the group of plaintiffs to hand in specific evidence to prove that they had been tracked down by the handset maker.
The group submitted the withdrawal to the Seoul Central District Court last Wednesday, according to court officials.
The group sought 800,000 won ($757) per person in damages.
The group and the company had six oral proceedings over the past two years.
Apple insisted that it had been building up a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and base stations.
Another class-action lawsuit involving around 28,000 iPhone users is under way at the Changwon District Court in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province.
By Kim Young-won (
wone0102@heraldcorp.com)
