Apple faces another iPhone ‘Batterygate’ legal claim, this time in the UK

Back in 2017, Apple admitted that it released an update to slow down older iPhones with aging batteries to prevent them from suddenly shutting down. It’s been five years since then, but Apple still isn’t done dealing with its repercussions. According to The Guardian, the tech giant is now facing a legal claim in the UK filed by a consumer rights campaigner named Justin Gutmann at the Competition Appeals Tribunal. Gutmann argued that Apple didn’t disclose that it was going to deliberately throttle users’ phone before it did so and that the company didn’t give them the option to disable the setting. 

The complaint covers the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, SE, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X models. If you’ll recall, the company originally released the update that intentionally slows down devices for the iPhone 6, 6s and SE before it expanded the feature’s reach to more devices. Guttman’s complaint said Apple introduced the slowdown feature to disguise the fact that older batteries could no longer cope with new OS updates. “Instead of doing the honourable and legal thing by their customers and offering a free [battery] replacement, repair service or compensation, Apple instead misled people by concealing a tool in software updates that slowed their devices by up to 58 percent,” Guttman said. 

If Guttman wins, Apple may have to pay damages totaling up to £750 million to over 25 million people who purchased the affected phones in the UK. The company was previously fined €10 million in Italy over the same issue and for failing to provide customers with the necessary information for maintaining and replacing batteries. In 2020, it also agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle one of the US lawsuits it faced over the iPhone slowdown, which earned each claimant who took part up to $25. 

In a statement sent to The Guardian, Apple said:

“We have never – and would never – do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades. Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that.”

Elon Musk is trying to get out of an SEC deal to have lawyers approve his tweets

Elon Musk has filed an appeal against a judge’s decision not to let him out of an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which requires him to have lawyers review some of his tweets. A district court judge ruled that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s consent decree with the SEC should stand. Now, Musk is hoping the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan will overturn that decision, as Reuters reports.

Musk’s pact with the SEC stems from an infamous 2018 incident in which he tweeted that he had “funding secured” to make Tesla a private company, though that allegedly wasn’t the case. The SEC laid securities fraud charges against Musk, who has not deleted the tweet in question nearly four years later.

He quickly settled the case by agreeing to step down as Tesla chairman (but remain as CEO), while he and the company each paid civil fines of $20 million. On top of that, Musk agreed to let a lawyer vet tweets that might include material information about Tesla. He later claimed he was “forced” into the settlement, but attempts to get out of the tweet-screening arrangement have proven unsuccessful.

“Musk cannot now seek to retract the agreement he knowingly and willingly entered by simply bemoaning that he felt like he had to agree to it at the time but now — once the specter of the litigation is a distant memory and his company has become, in his estimation, all but invincible — wishes that he had not,” US District Judge Lewis Liman wrote in April.

Musk is in the process of buying Twitter for $44 billion, despite threatening to back out. The deal is expected to close this year, pending approval by regulators and Twitter shareholders. As things stand, Musk is on the precipice of buying a social media platform on which he cannot speak entirely freely. That’s despite Musk telling the SEC itself that his purchase of Twitter would be a boon for free speech.

Meanwhile, Musk is being sued by Tesla investors over the same incident. The shareholders have accused Musk of making false and misleading statements that caused stock prices to rise, leading to billions of dollars in damages. Musk maintains he did have funding in place, though a judge ruled in May that “there was nothing concrete” about his claims. Musk has also been sued by an investor for allegedly not sticking to the terms of the SEC deal.

Qualcomm won’t have to pay its $1 billion EU fine over LTE deal with Apple

The European Union’s second highest court has ruled in favor of Qualcomm (PDF) and has scrapped a 2018 European Commission decision to slap the company with a €997 million ($1.05 billion) fine. Back in 2018, the Commission said Qualcomm abused its market dominance in LTE baseband chipsets by paying Apple billions of dollars from 2011 to 2016 to exclusively use its chips in iPhones and iPads. That allegedly prevented rivals, such as Intel, from striking deals with the iPhone-maker. Now, the General Court has annulled “in its entirety, the Commission decision.”

In its announcement, the General Court said it based its decision on two factors. First is that it found a “number of procedural irregularities” that affected Qualcomm’s right of defense. The Commission apparently failed to record the precise content of meetings and conference calls with third parties in connection with the case as it was required to do so. Further, it based its decision on Qualcomm’s alleged abuse of market dominance for LTE chipsets alone, even though the case’s statement of objections also mentioned its abuse of position when it comes to Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) chipsets. 

The General Court has also found that while Qualcomm’s payments reduced Apple’s incentives to use other companies’ products, there were no viable alternatives to its LTE chipsets for iPhones at the time anyway. It has also decided that there was no sufficient evidence to determine whether Qualcomm’s payments prevented Apple from using other companies’ chipsets for its iPad models released in 2014 and 2015.

This is the second fine imposed by the European Commission against big tech companies that the General Court has scrapped. In January, the court also overturned the €1.06 billion fine the Commission levied against Intel. Similar to this particular case, the Commission accused Intel of abusing its dominant position in the market by offering manufacturers such as HP, Dell and Lenovo incentives for using its microprocessors instead of those from rival AMD’s. 

Qualcomm’s fight might not be over, though. As Reuters notes, the Commission can still file an appeal with Europe’s highest court. Indeed, it told the publication that it will study the court’s judgement closely before deciding on its next steps.

Massachusetts court rejects proposed gig worker ballot measure

The New York Timesreports Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court has rejected a proposed ballot measure that would have enshrined Uber and Lyft’s business model in law. The court said the measure violated the Massachusetts constitution by including two unrelated policy decisions, including one hidden by “obscure language.”

The bulk of the proposed ballot measure outlined limited benefits for rideshare drivers. However, the offending provision would have said that drivers couldn’t be treated as an “employee or agent” of gig-based companies. If voted into law, this might have shielded outfits like Uber or Lyft from liability in the event of a crash or crime — not to mention kneecapping any attempts to reclassify drivers as employees in the state. The unrelated provisions raised concerns that voters might be “confused, misled and deprived” of a real choice, the court wrote in its decision.

Uber, Lyft and their supporters contended that formalizing the gig worker model would have protected flexibility for drivers seeking their own hours. Groups supporting the companies, such as Chamber of Progress, have claimed employee status could cost jobs and income. Critics like AFL-CIO union federation, however, have argued that measures like this create a false dichotomy between flexibility and benefits — they see ballot options like this as attempts to cut employment costs at the expense of laborers.

Uber and Lyft declined to comment. The two spent a total of $17.8 million endorsing the ballot measure, and have had mixed success promoting similar efforts in other states. They got Californians to vote for Proposition 22, a bid to reverse a state law protecting drivers as employees, only to watch as a judge ruled the measure unconstitutional. The companies struck an agreement with Washington State legislators in early 2022, but failed to get much traction in New York State.

Google may let rival ad platforms run commercials on YouTube

Google will allow other advertising intermediaries to run ads on YouTube, according to Reuters. The company currently requires advertisers to use its Ad Manager to place ads on YouTube, which has caught the attention of European Union antitrust officials.

The European Commission opened a probe into Google’s ad tech in 2021 after two years of informal consultations. Competition officials also cited concerns about potential restrictions on how rival ad platforms can run YouTube ads and the fact advertisers need to use the Display & Video 360 and Google Ads services. The investigation centers around whether Google, a division of Alphabet, gave itself an unfair advantage in the digital advertising space by limiting the user data that advertisers and rival ad platforms can access.

Reuters reports that Google’s concession could help allow it to settle the case and avoid a fine of as much as 10 percent of its global turnover. Alphabet generated revenue of $257 billion in 2021. However, it’s believed that Google will need to address other concerns to resolve the investigation.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is also looking into the company’s ad tech practices. In the US, senators last month filed a bill with bipartisan support that would break up Google’s ad business were it to become law. 

“We have been engaging constructively with the European Commission. We don’t have anything further to share at this stage,” a Google spokesperson told Engadget. “As with the Privacy Sandbox initiative, we are committed to working with regulators and the wider industry to achieve the best possible outcomes.”

Update 6/13 10:52PM ET: Added Google’s statement.

Google pays $118 million to settle gender pay discrimination lawsuit

Google has agreed to pay $118 million to settle a lawsuit first launched in 2017 over gender-based wage discrimination, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Three former female employees accused Google of segregating women into lower paying jobs that curbed advancement, while similarly-qualified men didn’t face those obstacles. 

The lawsuit was expanded to class-action status in 2021 and the settlement covers around 15,500 female employees who worked in Google’s California offices after September 2013. It includes a clause that independent experts must review Google’s hiring practices and pay-equity studies, according to the law office representing the plaintiffs. However, Google admitted no wrongdoing as part of the deal.

“While we strongly believe in the equity of our policies and practices, after nearly five years of litigation, both sides agreed that resolution of the matter, without any admission or findings, was in the best interest of everyone, and we’re very pleased to reach this agreement,” Google spokesperson Chris Pappas told the WSJ.

Google ran a pay-equity analysis to see if salaries, equity awards and bonuses were fair since 2013. The co-counsel for the plaintiffs said that the settlement would be “precedent-setting” for the industry. 

“As a woman who’s spent her entire career in the tech industry, I’m optimistic that the actions Google has agreed to take as part of this settlement will ensure more equity for women,” said one of the original three plaintiffs, Holly Pease, in a statement from law firm Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein. “Google, since its founding, has led the tech industry. They also have an opportunity to lead the charge to ensure inclusion and equity for women in tech.”

Google is far from the only tech company to face complaints over gender-based pay. Riot Games recently paid $10 million to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit while Microsoft, Uber and other firms have faced pay equity accusations. The gender pay gap in the US didn’t improve last year, according to the labor group SHRM — March 15 is still Equal Pay Day, the date that represents how far into 2022 women have to work to earn what men earned by the end of 2021.

Apple tweaks third-party dating app payment rules to comply with Dutch regulator’s order

Apple has announced a handful of changes to its rules related to dating app payments in order to comply with orders from the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM). If you’ll recall, the regulator had ordered the tech giant to allow third-party payments in locally available dating apps by January this year. A Reuters report from March said the company had yet to adhere to the orders in a way that truly complies with what the regulator wanted, though — until now, that is.

In its announcement, Apple said it has made adjustments to the user interface for third-party payments. As part of its efforts to comply with the ACM, it started showing a warning whenever someone tries to pay with a third-party payment option, warning them that they’ll have to contact the developer for a refund. As Reuters notes, that warning originally came with a button that made it easy to back out of using an external payment system. The ACM reportedly didn’t approve of that button, so Apple had to remove it. 

Apple also clarified in its post that even developers already paying lower cuts are entitled to the discounted commission rates it takes from third-party payments. Back when the company said it was going to comply with the ACM’s demands, it revealed that developers paying a 30 percent cut would only be charged 27 percent. It wasn’t clear, however, whether developers already paying lower rates for meeting certain criteria, such as earning less than a million a year, will also get to enjoy the 3 percent discount. Apple has clarified in its announcement that they will indeed pay lower commissions for third-party payments, so those only being charged 15 percent will only have to hand over 12 percent to the company. 

In a statement posted on its website, the ACM said that with these changes, “Apple will meet the requirements that the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) set under European and Dutch competition rules.” The regulator also revealed that Apple had to pay fines totaling €50 million for failing to satisfy the ACM’s conditions for compliance over the past few months. Apple said, however, that it doesn’t believe some of the changes it had to implement are in the best interests of its users’ privacy or data security. “As we’ve previously said,” the company added, “we disagree with the ACM’s original order and are appealing it.”