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iPhone lawsuit wins class action status

Lawsuit against Apple and AT&T over their iPhone exclusivity contract is granted class action status.

Sam Diaz Senior editor, ZDNet
Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet. He has been a technology and business blogger, reporter and editor at the Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, and Fresno Bee for more than 18 years.
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Sam Diaz

A lawsuit against Apple and AT&T over their exclusivity contract has been granted class action status, meaning it now includes anyone who bought an iPhone between June 29, 2007, and present day and signed up for AT&T service. (Court Filing PDF)

The heart of the class action suit, which was originally filed in October 2007, is whether consumers who entered the two-year contract with AT&T did so knowing that they were actually entering a de-facto five-year contract because that's what the AT&T-Apple exclusivity agreement has been reported to be.

Apple has never publicly stated how long its exclusivity contract with AT&T is, though a five year time period--first reported by USA Today back in 2007--was recently confirmed through court documents related to this case.

This story was originally published, under the headline " Lawsuit against Apple, AT&T exclusivity wins 'class action' status " at ZDNet's Between the Lines.