Apple earns appeal ticket, but UK iCloud class action rolls on

(CN) — Apple bought itself a trip to Britain’s second-highest court on Wednesday, but not a pause button on a multibillion-pound British consumer case over iCloud.

The U.K.’s Competition Appeal Tribunal gave Apple permission to appeal part of a ruling in a proposed class action brought by the Consumers’ Association, better known as Which?, while keeping the broader case on track for trial in October 2028.

Which? says Apple used its control of the iPhone ecosystem to give iCloud an edge over rival cloud-storage services, leaving consumers with fewer meaningful choices and higher prices. Apple says the lawsuit gets both the technology and the economics wrong.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal, a specialist U.K. court established in 2003 that hears antitrust and regulatory cases, is the venue for many of Britain’s largest class-action competition claims.

Apple’s appeal bid focused on a question that sounds technical but could have consequences far beyond this case: whether consumers can recover damages for what lawyers call “foregone consumer surplus,” essentially the value they say was lost when competition was weakened. Apple argues allowing those claims would have implications for other competition lawsuits built around consumer choice and market effects.

“There is a compelling reason because it’s a novel point of law which will affect other cases,” Marie Demetriou said for Apple.

Which? argues that Apple was asking appellate judges to weigh in on a contested economic theory before the evidence had been tested. The consumer group said the real question was not whether Apple had identified a legal issue worth debating, but whether the Which? case was fundamentally flawed.

“The question is rather whether Apple has real prospects of persuading the Court of Appeal that our position is so unarguably bad it should not go to trial,” Phillip Woolfe, counsel for Which?, said.

The judges agreed the issue warrants a closer look, clearing the way for Apple to take it to the Court of Appeal of England and Wales even as the broader litigation continues moving toward trial.

Which? filed the lawsuit in November 2024 on behalf of U.K. users who obtained iCloud services on Apple devices configured for the United Kingdom. The consumer group estimates damages for paying iCloud users at between 1.38 billion pounds (about $1.85 billion) and 1.99 billion pounds (about $2.67 billion) before interest. Which? is also seeking compensation for users who never paid for the service.

Which? says Apple made iCloud the most seamless option across iPhones and iPads while limiting what competing services could offer, particularly for full-device backups and certain categories of files. According to the consumer group, those design choices reduced competition and steered users toward Apple’s own service. Apple counters that the claim depends on a speculative vision of how cloud-storage competition would have evolved without the practices being challenged.

The tribunal ordered Apple to pay 120,000 pounds (about $161,000) exclusive of VAT toward Which?’s costs arising from the certification fight, applying a 40% reduction to a starting figure of 200,000 pounds (about $268,400).

Attention then shifted to the eye-watering cost of taking the case to trial. Apple’s high-level budget for an eight-week hearing was put at between 40 million pounds (about $54 million) and 50 million pounds (about $67 million), including 5.5 million to 6 million pounds, roughly $7.4 million to $8 million, for expert evidence alone. The tribunal described the figures as “extraordinary” and said “if this was the budget and it was going to be their total costs claim … it would be plain that costs of that order would be unreasonable and disproportionate.”

Apple will now take its strikeout arguments to the Court of Appeal while the tribunal presses ahead with the underlying claim. With pleadings due by Sept. 14, 2026, judges set the massive iCloud consumer lawsuit on course for an October 2028 trial, finding that an earlier start would be too ambitious. Apple, however, warned that the case is unlikely to be ready before January 2029.

Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.