Nobody in America cares about pixel loss caused by iPhone notch, says judge
A California federal judge has declared that "there doesn't seem to be anyone in America" who cares about the iPhone pixel count being down because of rounded edges and the notch.
A class action suit launched in December accused Apple of making fraudulent claims about the size and pixel count of its OLED displays. The argument is, quite literally, about cut corners. The suit was launched by plaintiffs Christian Sponchiado and Courtney Davis.
The suit asserts fraud because Apple misrepresents the screen size of the iPhone. The allegation points out that Apple fails to factor in the rounded corners in the diagonal measurement of the screen, as well as the notch.
It also claims that Apple has overstated the pixel count to mislead consumers about the screen quality.
U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr, however, is skeptical. "There doesn't really seem to be anyone in America who seems to be concerned about it," he said, according to Law360. Judge Gilliam still thinks Apple's disclosure defeats allegations of fraud and unjust enrichment.
Apple's legal counsel, Tiffany Cheung of Morrison & Foerster LLP, argued that the screen size claims are defeated by multiple disclosures on the packaging of the iPhones in question. She went on to state that the plaintiffs allege Apple is miscounting subpixels, though Apple makes no representation about subpixels in its marketing.
C.K. Lee of Lee Litigation Group PLLC, representing the plaintiffs, argued that Apple could have told consumers the advertised pixel count is "not true pixels," which would reduce the overall resolution.
Judge Gilliam remained skeptical, and believes that other judges have set precedent barring the plaintiffs from asserting class consumer protection. However, he said that he would take the arguments under submission.
The suit accuses Apple of being misleading about the screen size of the iPhone X, declared as 5.8 inches. According to the filing, the screen is actually "only about 5.6875 inches," and takes issue with the 5.8-inch measurement "pretending that the screen does not have rounded corners."
Shortly after this declaration, the suit claims an image proves "the phones themselves display their false diagonal screen sizes," with the Compare iPhone page of the Apple website shown on the iPhone X's screen. Also shown in the photograph alongside the screen size is an asterisk, indicating further detail is available down the page explaining how the measurement takes into account the corners.
The suit calls for an injunction against the offending practices, plus damage payments directed to everyone participating in the class action.
A class action suit launched in December accused Apple of making fraudulent claims about the size and pixel count of its OLED displays. The argument is, quite literally, about cut corners. The suit was launched by plaintiffs Christian Sponchiado and Courtney Davis.
The suit asserts fraud because Apple misrepresents the screen size of the iPhone. The allegation points out that Apple fails to factor in the rounded corners in the diagonal measurement of the screen, as well as the notch.
It also claims that Apple has overstated the pixel count to mislead consumers about the screen quality.
U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr, however, is skeptical. "There doesn't really seem to be anyone in America who seems to be concerned about it," he said, according to Law360. Judge Gilliam still thinks Apple's disclosure defeats allegations of fraud and unjust enrichment.
Apple's legal counsel, Tiffany Cheung of Morrison & Foerster LLP, argued that the screen size claims are defeated by multiple disclosures on the packaging of the iPhones in question. She went on to state that the plaintiffs allege Apple is miscounting subpixels, though Apple makes no representation about subpixels in its marketing.
C.K. Lee of Lee Litigation Group PLLC, representing the plaintiffs, argued that Apple could have told consumers the advertised pixel count is "not true pixels," which would reduce the overall resolution.
Judge Gilliam remained skeptical, and believes that other judges have set precedent barring the plaintiffs from asserting class consumer protection. However, he said that he would take the arguments under submission.
The suit accuses Apple of being misleading about the screen size of the iPhone X, declared as 5.8 inches. According to the filing, the screen is actually "only about 5.6875 inches," and takes issue with the 5.8-inch measurement "pretending that the screen does not have rounded corners."
Shortly after this declaration, the suit claims an image proves "the phones themselves display their false diagonal screen sizes," with the Compare iPhone page of the Apple website shown on the iPhone X's screen. Also shown in the photograph alongside the screen size is an asterisk, indicating further detail is available down the page explaining how the measurement takes into account the corners.
The suit calls for an injunction against the offending practices, plus damage payments directed to everyone participating in the class action.
Sponchiado & Davis vs Apple by Mike Wuerthele on Scribd
Comments
Or was that in a prior lawsuit?
Pay for wasting the courts and Apple’s time...
I totally agree people with valid claims should be able to have their time in court but as others have said, as well as the judge (for once), almost nobody cares about the ridiculously high number of pixels or if Apple measured the diagonal size of the display at the corners of the rectangular screen before removing a little bit to give it rounded, and safer, corners.
Loser pays as a general rule of law tho would not be a good idea IMO.
But, but, but, then “poor” people wouldn’t be able to sue anybody because lawyers would no longer take on contingency cases with the knowledge it could cost them really big bucks. Don’t you know.
You take the good with bad. There are ethical companies and unethical companies just as there are ethical and unethical people. Companies do lie about the features of their products. The marketers feel they could get away things because of semantics or industry “standards”, but in the end, advertising still needs to be truthful in layman’s terms.
What matters is that features are advertised in layman understandable terms, right? Not technically disclosed in small print. Apple’s case here is ambulance chasing, but companies do cross the line.
In the CRT days, display manufacturing often advertised the size of their displays by the diagonal length of the tube, but the viewable diagonal of the display was typically 10% smaller. A monitor advertised as being 17” really only had 15.5” to 16” diagonal. In terms of area, that would be 15% to 20% less. The OEMs knew that advertising the smaller number meant lower sales, and that the larger number would make their displays more attractive, and that people would interpret their advertising of the vacuum tube diagonal as the diagonal of the viewable display.
There are a lot of misleading advertising. I recently looked at energy plans and many providers advertise the ¢/kWHr if you use 2000 kWHr. They had an clickable asterisk, which expanded to show that if you used 500 kWHr, the price was 25% higher for lower usage. They can get away with it because they disclosed it, but how close to the line are they lying here? Or like the carrier plans advertised as “unlimited”, but it is really “unlimited up to x GB, then throttled, then cancelled if the carrier doesn’t like your usage” plans.
Still has problems I'm not qualified to solve...
Everyone is supposed to have equal access to the courts. The ability to win In court is already tilted in favor of the wealthy, because they can afford the best legal services. It’s absolutely true that there are people who abuse the system hoping to get payoffs just to go away. Justice isn’t achieved, however, by making the system prohibitively inaccessible to all but those who are rich enough to gamble against the cost of paying the other guys’ legal fees.
Any 'loser pays' rule should be surrounded by a bunch of conditions, because while it could help dissuade frivolous lawsuits, it may also dissuade legitimate lawsuits. For the latter the offending corporation could just pad the bill and scare off any plaintiff. At the same time, if a lawyer is in the business of organising the class action, in the sense they are the one who initiated it and recruits members, then they should certainly be on the hook, since it then could be considered suing 'for income', as opposed to 'for cause'.
Kudos for the judge for stating the obvious that no real person actually cares about the "loss of pixels" due to rounded corners. To measure the screen from rounded corner to rounded corner would be more misleading than the way Apple did it.