A federal judge has partially granted Apple Inc.'s motion to dismiss a putative class action over claims that it breached its contract with iCloud users when it enlisted other tech giants to store user data, further outlining what qualifies as an injury worthy of standing in cases involving consumer data.

The class members allege that Apple deceived them into overpaying for the iCloud subscription since their content was stored by the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google, some of which offer cheaper storage and cloud computing services, and not by Apple, as the agreement suggested, according to the August complaint.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California agreed with the company's Cooley attorneys that class members must currently pay for an iCloud subscription to qualify for injunctive relief. The jurist, who Wired once dubbed the "Meme-Worthy Judge of Silicon Valley's Titans" as her rulings in the Yahoo and Adobe data breach cases blazed fresh trails in data protection law, invoked two of her prior decisions in the March 27 order.

Koh ruled that the "real and immediate threat of repeated injury" necessary to gain standing for Article III injunctive relief does not apply to class members who do not currently pay for the service, and she said plaintiffs do not allege that they currently pay for iCloud or plan to in the future.

"Simply pleading that plaintiffs are storing their data on Apple's iCloud is not enough to plead an injury in fact because plaintiffs' injury is not merely connected to storing data on the iCloud but to overpaying for the paid version of iCloud storage," Koh wrote. "Without alleging that plaintiffs are currently paid iCloud subscribers—as opposed to merely utilizing the free five GB of iCloud storage—plaintiffs have not met their burden of establishing an injury that is 'certainly impending.'"

The judge granted Apple's motion to dismiss injunctive relief claims and alleged violations of California's False Advertising (FAL) and Unfair Competition Laws (UCL) but offered plaintiffs leave to amend.

Koh cited In re iPhone Application Litigation, which she presided over, in batting away class members' claims that they relied on the contractual language in their decision to purchase a subscription, a necessary prong in FAL and UCL violations.

"Plaintiffs assert that they adequately plead reliance because they 'affirmatively clicked the "AGREE" [button] signifying their review and assent to the contract terms,' including Apple's alleged misrepresentations regarding iCloud storage. This court, however, has previously rejected this precise argument," she wrote.

However, the judge did find that the class sufficiently made a case for monetary damages under Article III with their claims that "Apple's 'price premium' harmed putative class members who would have otherwise utilized these cheaper cloud storage alternatives."

Plaintiffs, who are represented by The Katriel Law Firm and The Mehdi Firm, allege that Apple breached its terms of service by handing off its digital files to third parties to store in their facilities. Koh said that in the Yahoo data breach litigation, "this court has previously recognized that such allegations are sufficient to confer standing."

Apple and Cooley's Beatriz Mejia, Matthew Brown and Lauren Pomeroy in San Francisco did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication. Roy Katriel of The Katriel Law Firm in Del Mar, California, and Azra Mehdi of The Mehdi Firm in San Francisco also did not respond to a request for comment.