SAN FRANCISCO — Apple Inc. has beaten back class certification in a long-running lawsuit accusing the company of misleading consumers about the security of the personal information stored on the company's mobile devices.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of the Northern District of California found consumers “failed to demonstrate that Apple's privacy-related marketing was sufficiently extensive to support an inference of class-wide exposure” on their false advertising-related claims. The judge also found the plaintiffs hadn't demonstrated a feasible way to calculate damages based on their theory of liability.

Tigar has overseen five consolidated lawsuits targeting Apple and a group of app makers with privacy-related claims since 2013. The suits claimed the app makers violated users' privacy by accessing the contact information stored on their Apple devices. Apple had touted that it isolated—or “sandboxed”—the data available inside any given app from other apps. The company also advertised that its App Store was curated so that only apps that met certain privacy standards were allowed on its devices.