S. Korean plans class action against Apple

A South Korean lawyer said Friday he plans to launch a class action lawsuit against US technology giant Apple over an iPhone feature that can track the location of users. Kim Hyung-Suk last month received one million won ($950) in compensation from Apple's Korean unit, following an interim order by a court in the southeastern city of Changwon. It was the first such payout by the company. Kim said that as of Friday some 20,000 iPhone users had joined online preparations for a class action suit. "Users who bought iPhones or iPads before May 1 will be able to join the action," Kim, who works for the Miraelaw legal firm in Changwon, told AFP. Apple in May released updated software for iPhones to fix "bugs" that resulted in location data being unencrypted and stored for up to a year. "In the first round of the class action which I plan to file around the end of the month, I plan to include the Apple head office as a target," Kim said. The lawyer said no representative from Apple Korea was present during his court hearing in Changwon. "In the action, I said my privacy was breached by Apple because it collected location information without my consent, which is illegal, and asked for damages," Kim said. Park Jin-Su, spokesman for Changwon District Court, said the compensation order it issued was "a simple, quick decision" that did not involve extensive deliberations on the merits of the complaint. He told AFP that Apple Korea had failed to raise objections within the legal limit of two weeks after the court order, and therefore the claimant collected the money. The court spokesman said Apple "has every right to dispute the decision and if it does so, full-fledged hearings and a court ruling would follow". South Korea has about three million iPhone users.