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iMessage: Judge orders Apple to face lawsuit over disappearing text messages

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If Apple thought that launching a Web tool to clear up an ongoing iMessage issue would finally put the whole thing to bed, it was wrong.

A lawsuit brought against the company back in May that claimed the tech giant failed to explain to iPhone users that text messages would fail to arrive if they switched to a handset with a different operating system was this week given the green light to proceed, Reuters reported Tuesday.

US District Court Judge Lucy Koh said in a San Jose, California court that Apple will have to defend itself against the claim brought earlier this year by Adrienne Moore.

The plaintiff had switched from an iPhone 4 to a Galaxy S5, but a failure to deregister her old Apple phone from iMessage meant countless text messages never made it to her new Android handset.

Judge Koh, who’s already well known to Apple through the company’s long-running patent-related battles with Samsung, said Moore should be allowed the opportunity to present her claim that the tech giant interfered with her wireless service contract and broke California’s ‘unfair competition’ law by preventing text messages from reaching her, Reuters reported.

Responding to Moore’s claim in court papers, the Cupertino company said, “Apple takes customer satisfaction extremely seriously, but the law does not provide a remedy when, as here, technology simply does not function as plaintiff subjectively believes it should.”

While Apple acknowledged the existence of the iMessage bug several months ago, it took till this week to roll out an effective fix.

As for how Moore fares in her court battle against one of the biggest companies in the world, we’ll keep you posted.

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Trevor Mogg
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