T-Mobile US hit out at a lawsuit filed by AT&T seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the former using its Easy Switch price comparison tool to gain new customers, arguing its rival’s case is not valid.

The operator filed its response in a federal court on 8 December. T-Mobile stated the challenge to Easy Switch is irrelevant because it removed a function scraping AT&T customer data four days before the rival initiated its legal action.

AT&T had argued the data was being accessed to encourage customers to switch providers.

T-Mobile stated since ending the scraping, “Easy Switch has only allowed AT&T customers to upload a copy of their wireless bill or manually enter their wireless plan information”.

“AT&T does not allege that this current version of Easy Switch is unlawful or harms it, let alone irreparably so.”

T-Mobile deployed a beta version of Easy Switch at the Formula 1 Heineken Las Vegas Grand Prix on 20 November.

Easy Switch is an AI tool which analyses current AT&T or Verizon accounts before recommending optimal T-Mobile plans. It went live on 1 December.

AT&T sought a temporary restraining order to prevent T-Mobile using a price comparison tool to access secure software without permission.

It implemented security measures to block the access on 24 November.

After AT&T’s countermeasures, T-Mobile disabled the original Easy Switch for its customers on 26 November and replaced it with the current version.

On 5 December, T-Mobile’s counsel told AT&T it “does not intend to revert to the original version of Easy Switch”.

Backed down
T-Mobile’s lawyers stated it dropped the original version because of “AT&T’s dogged efforts to technologically block its customers from taking advantage of the feature and thereby impede their ability to compare the companies’ offerings”.

“These facts resolve the motion.”

“The conduct AT&T challenges is not occurring and AT&T has not objected to the operation of Easy Switch in its current form.”

An AT&T representative told Mobile World Live it appreciates T-Mobile saying it “will stop recklessly scraping customer data for now”.

“We ask that they commit, on the record, to never employing these unlawful tactics that put customers and intellectual property rights at risk again.”

The lawsuit is scheduled to move to an in-person hearing on 16 December in a US district court in the state of Texas.