PARIS: French consumer organization called HOP, which stands for “Stop Planned Obsolescence,” filed suit against Apple in France. Joining Apple in the group’s crosshairs is printer manufacturer Epson. Laetitia Vasseur, co founder of HOP, says that by filing the two complaints, it hopes to have both companies answer to charges that they violated French consumer law; in the country, planned obsolescence is not allowed. Companies found guilty of violating this law can be fined as
much as 5% of their annual revenue. That would amount to a hefty $11.5 billion fine that Apple could be forced to pay.
French law prevents companies from shortening the lives of its products on purpose in order to generate demand for newer models. Updates that Apple sent out last year for the Apple iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, iPhone SE and iPhone 7 included a feature that throttled CPU speed in order not to tax older batteries. The specific update was to iOS 10.2.1, and a month after its release, Apple revealed that it was sent out to prevent certain iPhone models from shutting down when the battery could not provide enough power to handle a heavy duty task.