By Lee Hyo-sik
About 27,800 iPhone users here have joined a class-action lawsuit against Apple over the phone’s indiscriminate collecting of users’ location information, a law firm organizing the suit said Monday.
That number is far fewer than the firm expected as the odds of winning a legal battle against the world’s largest information technology company have increasingly become slim.
Miraelaw, based in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, said that 27,802 iPhone users registered with the law firm to join a suit against Apple, paying 16,900 won ($16) each in litigation fees for which they will each receive 1 million won if they win the case. The amount to be claimed in court would be more than 27 billion won.
The law firm stands to receive 20 percent of the compensation for winning the suit.
This means for every 1 million won awarded to a claimant, 200,000 won will go to the firm. Even if the case is lost, the firm still receives 9,000 won from each participant as a fee for arguing the case.
Applications were received through the website (www.sueapple.co.kr) from July 15 to 31.
The move to file a class-action suit came as Changwon District Court ruled early last month that Apple pay 1 million won for privacy infringement caused by the location-tracking function to Kim Hyeong-seok, a lawyer with Miraelaw.
This was the first local case where a smartphone user was awarded compensation for Apple’s location data collection.
“We are going to file a class-action lawsuit with Changwon District Court against Apple by mid-August after checking the qualifications of the 27,802 iPhone users seeking to participate in the suit. We will take on not only Apple Korea, but also Apple headquarters in California,” Miraelaw lawyer Lee Jae-choul said.
The hype surrounding the planned class-action lawsuit against the world’s largest tech firm has attracted a great deal of attention from iPhone users here and abroad.
The law firm initially expected at least 100,000 users to join the suit.
However, the public’s interest in the case cooled as legal experts argued that the suit would simply line the pockets of the lawyers, not participants.
They said there is no guarantee that the court will rule against Apple and whether the law firm wins or not, it still makes substantial amounts of money and receives publicity.
Additionally, unsuccessful class-action suits filed against large firms in the past have also discouraged many iPhone users from taking part.