Wow, potentially making users upgrade to a newer, free OS. Tyranny is alive and well.
It depends on the performance of the device once you "upgrade". My 4s worked perfectly fine with iOS7 but when I upgraded to 8 the performance declined to the point of where just slowly typing in a few letters into a Safari search box required a noticeable wait for them to appear in the search box. The phone became slower in general as well.
If this is successful then I won't be surprised if other people sue over not having the ability to downgrade software. Apple is getting better at making new software run well on older devices but no doubt there are some who upgrade and have a worse experience. Some lawyer will find them.
I don't support this lawsuit but one thing they might have in their favor is this wasn't new functionality it was existing functionality that broke and the only way to fix it was by installing completely new software. I'm just imagining using Windows 7, having something that worked stop working and Microsoft say the only fix is upgrading to Windows 8. That would be pure torture.
My favorite is how when people are looking to file a lawsuit, it's always that one meaningless feature that is now supposedly so important that it makes their phone "unusuable"... The vast majority of iPhone users don't use FaceTime regularly, and some I know don't even know it exists!
After being told that a case had no merit, a patent troll went ahead with the case anyway, hoping that their victim would pay up instead of facing a costly court battle.
The troll lost and Cote told them that they must pay costs to the defendant.
When the troll's lawyer claimed their client hadn't got the money, Cote made the law firm liable for the costs instead.
^^Fantastic...more of this please!
However this was back in 2014. Has there been any other examples since then to act as a deterrent I wonder?
Probably not.
We don't have the same problem in the UK. If you lose the case then you pay the other party's costs.
There should be some kind of balance. I agree with others that the patent trolls are horrible, as are many others who file baseless or nuisance lawsuits. However, It's not desirable to have a situation where a plaintiff with real damages and legit reason to sue would be deterred because of the prospect of getting bankrupted for it. Imagine if you had real damages caused by your neighbor (hypothetical, just sayin') but you don't really "know" how it will end up. You have a difference of opinion, that's why it's being decided in a court. Would you risk having to pay for *their* legal expenses in addition to your own? Or just suck it up and be screwed? If both sides figure the other guy is going to have to pay, wouldn't you both get the very best legal representation and all the costs are going to get jacked up?
I guess the plaintiff, Christina Grace really was horribly inconvenienced. I mean, jeez... did you SEE how many lawyers she managed to get to represent her? She must've spent a bloody fortune on legal fees.
I completely agree with this lawsuit. The users were FORCED to spend substantial sums of money to upgrade to the next OS and that did great harm. Let's see...how much did it cost them? Yes, it cost them $0.00. That's way too much. After all, it could have taken 55 minutes to download the upgrade and then they had to wait another 10 minutes while the OS installed and the phone rebooted and they didn't have use of the phone during that latter period. Imagine, not having use of the phone for 10 whole minutes! I know people who go into withdrawal systems and have great physical harm if they can't look at their Facebook posts or are unable to text during a 10 minute period. Oh, the horror...the horror. Do you understand how much emotional damage was done?
I think Apple should be punished severely and users should get back 7x what they spent to upgrade the OS to show terrible companies such as Apple that we're not going to let them get away with giving things to their users for free. Shame on them.
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I think Apple should be punished severely and users should get back 7x what they spent to upgrade the OS to show terrible companies such as Apple that we're not going to let them get away with giving things to their users for free. Shame on them.