German court stops Apple from using a deceptive statement following iPhone ban

Back in December, the German court ruled in favor of Qualcomm and moved to ban sales of those affected iPhone including the iPhone 7 and 8 models due to an ongoing patent dispute with Qualcomm.

Following the ban, Apple released a statement regarding the ban. It said that while 15 retailers in Germany would no longer sell the phones, the affected models would still be available “through more than 4,300 carriers and resellers across Germany,” as per the Retuers report.

A three-judge panel of the German court agreed that Apple should remove the second part of the statement on the grounds that it can potentially mislead consumers into thinking that the 4,300 resellers and carriers were well-stocked with the banned iPhone models.

The press release… is misleading as it contains statements that are at least potentially deceptive about the availability of the goods, namely the iPhones affected by the ruling,

This kind of thing would never happen in the United States, especially not for a “potentially misleading statement” - have you ever seen an American infomercial? Anyway, European consumer protection laws are far stricter than US companies have gotten away with.

iPhones were already banned in China in early December with Germany following soon after. Both bans were a result of Apple’s alleged patent infringements against Qualcomm. The legal battle between Qualcomm and Apple was also said to slow the iPhone’s 5G adoption while the iPhone bans hurt Apple during its period of declining iPhone sales.

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