US Court Issues Restraining Order Against Bitcasa

By ending its Infinite cloud storage service plan, Bitcasa has opened itself up to a class action lawsuit, which has encouraged the U.S. District Court in Northern California to issue a temporary restraining order.

The class action lawsuit was filed by Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein on behalf of Shawn Romack and other angry Bitcasa customers following the cloud storage services provider’s announcement late last month that it would be putting an end to its Infinite plan. The Infinite plan was scheduled to end on November 15, at which point any data not transitioned to either the 1TB or 10TB service plan (or off Bitcasa’s infrastructure entirely) would be deleted.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup issues a restraining order on November 13 that forces Bitcasa to keep the data stored at least until November 20.

The class action lawsuit accuses Bitcasa of forcing Infinite subscribers to shift data to plans that are up to 10 times more expensive than the unlimited cloud storage plan that Bitcasa had become known for. The lawsuit alleges that Bitcasa “breached their contracts and violated California law.” A hearing date has been set for November 19, which could explain Alsup’s temporary restraining order that would end on November 20 or later.

Bitcasa had originally intended to delete all non-migrated data on November 16, but it appears customers will have some more time to move their data. However, if the class action suit has some legs, it could push the timeline even further out.

Bitcasa announced the end of the Infinite plan on October 23. The company noted that only 0.1 percent of its customers require more than 10 terabytes of cloud storage space. Bitcasa also hinted at a “growing number of suspected abusers” last month in its blog post announcing the end of Infinite.