In February Patently Apple posted a report titled "Class Action Lawsuit Launched against Apple over Intentionally Breaking FaceTime on iOS 6." The lawsuit was filed in an attempt to convince the judge to grant it Class Action status. The complaint stated that "This is a consumer class action brought by Plaintiff on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated who owned an Apple iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S that was operating on iOS 6 or an earlier operating system, and therefore lost the ability to use Apple's 'FaceTime' video conferencing feature when Apple intentionally broke FaceTime for iOS 6 and earlier operating systems on April 16, 2014." Almost six months later and we learn that a North Californian Judge has ruled that the Class Action can proceed against Apple.

According to Reuters, "U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled late on Friday that iPhone 4 and 4S users can pursue nationwide class action claims that Apple intentionally "broke" FaceTime to save money from routing calls through servers owned by Akamai Technologies Inc."

The report further noted that "Koh said the plaintiffs alleged some measurable loss to their phones' value, and could try to show that Cupertino, California-based Apple's conduct constituted a trespass and violated state consumer protection laws.

The San Jose, California-based judge twice quoted from what the plaintiffs said was an Apple employee's internal email characterizing iOS 6 users as 'basically screwed' because of the disabling of FaceTime. She also rejected Apple's argument that the plaintiffs suffered no economic loss because FaceTime was a 'free' service.

Koh said in a footnote that 'FaceTime is a 'feature' of the iPhone and thus a component of the iPhone's cost. Indeed, Apple advertised FaceTime as 'one more thing that makes an iPhone an iPhone.'"

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