The federal judge overseeing litigation against Apple Inc. accusing the company of surreptitiously slowing the speeds of certain iPhones has largely allowed claims brought under California and federal computer privacy laws to proceed against the company.

But U.S. District Judge Edward Davila of the Northern District of California in a 39-page order issued Monday largely sided with Apple on separate claims brought under California's consumer protection laws.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila of the Northern District of California.

“The court finds that some of plaintiffs' allegations are at full capacity, but others need to be recharged,” wrote Davila, who gave plaintiffs another shot at pleading all the claims he dismissed.

Davila's ruling came in response to the company's first attempt to narrow the multidistrict litigation—a motion to dismiss filed by the company's lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Apple argued that customers had authorized Apple to install software on the affected iPhones and that the decreased performance speed was a trade-off to squelch sudden, unexpected shutdowns.

But Davila found that Apple had not indicated to customers that the software update they had agreed to download would slow the processing speeds on their phones. “In this way, even though plaintiffs voluntarily installed the iOS updates, they never gave permission for Apple to cause damage to their iPhones,” Davila wrote.

Davila, however, found that the plaintiffs' argument that the devices' batteries were fundamentally mismatched with the phones' processing and software needs “buckle[d] under its own weight.”

“Although the asserted defects affect the operation of the processors in plaintiffs' devices and can cause those devices to shut down and remain dead until reconnected to power, plaintiffs do not satisfactorily plead the circumstances necessary to trigger Apple's duty to disclose” the defects, Davila wrote. “As plaintiffs' own allegations demonstrate, consumers are fully aware of the facts regarding software capability and battery capacity. … In reality, plaintiffs apparently seek to hold Apple liable for failing to provide a battery that lasted as long as plaintiffs preferred.”

Also in Monday's ruling, Davila turned back Apple's request to limit the suit to claims of just U.S. citizens who purchased their devices stateside. Davila wrote that the practical and constitutional issues Apple's lawyers raised about potentially opening the case up to foreign claims would be “better addressed at a later stage of the proceedings, such as class certification.”

Gibson Dunn's Christopher Chorba, who argued Apple's motion to dismiss last week, didn't immediately respond to a message Monday.

Plaintiffs are represented in the case by a 39-lawyer team led by Joseph Cotchett of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy in Burlingame and Laurence King of Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer in San Francisco.

Mark Molumphy of Cotchett of Cotchett said Monday afternoon that the plaintiffs team was “very pleased with the overall order,” in particular the judge's “rejection of the idea that the non-residents can't pursue claims in this court.”

“It's full-speed ahead with the throttling theory of the case,”Molumphy said.

Read the judge's order below:

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