The Supreme Court has ruled against South Korean iPhone users who filed a suit against Apple for collecting their location information without consent.

South Korea’s top court upheld the lower court's ruling on Thursday, dismissing the complaint filed against the U.S. tech giant and its local unit Apple Korea.

While acknowledging the illegality of Apple's collection of location data without user consent, the court said that it would be hard to say that the company inflicted damages severe enough to have to compensate the users.

In August 2011, about 28-thousand local iPhone users filed the suit a few weeks after the Korea Communications Commission(KCC) ordered Apple to pay a fine for violating location information laws.

However, the district court and appeals court dismissed the complaint. Only 299 people participated in the appeal.