The Siri software device of Apple, incorporated in the US, recorded and collected data even when the user did not request to operate the device, in a manner that violated the user’s privacy, and Apple published a formal apology regarding the incident.
The Court held that Israel is the forum of convenience for hearing the contentions. Permission for hearing an international dispute case in Israel will be granted upon reviewing three conditions: The existence of a certain affiliation with Israel, the strength of the contentions and whether Israel is the forum of convenience for clarifying the conflict. The third condition entails three sub-tests: Most affiliation test; Reasonable expectations of the parties’ test and public interest test. Here, the act underlying the contentions is the transfer of recordings to Apple, however its servers are not located in Israel. Nevertheless, because the device from which the recordings were transferred is in Israel, there is an affinity for Israel. In addition, the fact that Apple issued an apology indicates that the contentions are not baseless. As for the convenient forum, the fact that Apple is a huge international corporation operating in many arenas alone justify that it submits itself to the Courts in countries where it has significant activity.