Zach Ward and Thomas Buchar have done something that few others have: they’ve filed a putative class action lawsuit in the U.S District Court in Northern California against Apple. Why? Because they claimed that the mega-corporation had violated anti-trust laws by chaining iPhone buyers into contracts with AT&T Mobility.
As reported by CNET, the “plaintiffs claim Apple violated the Sherman Act’s prohibition on monopolization by not obtaining consumers’ contractual consent to have their iPhones locked when the tech giant entered into a five-year exclusivity agreement with the wireless carrier in 2007.”
If that hasn’t caused you to raise your eyebrows past the roof just yet, it gets better. The lawsuit apparently also seeks an order “restraining Apple from programming iPhones in such a way that would prevent consumers from unlocking their SIM cards.” Additionally, they’re also demanding that Apple provide SIM unlock codes to whomever requests them, an order that prevents Apple from selling iPhones without “adequately disclosing that the handsets are locked” and acquiring contractual agreement from the consumers in regards to that arrangement.
While this is certainly not the first time that consumers have expressed dissatisfaction against hardware locks of such variety, the lawsuit filed by the aforementioned duo is one of the rare ones looking to pursue the handset maker as opposed to the wireless carrier. Will they succeed? Only time will tell.
