A lawyer in Chengdu, Sichuan province recently filed a lawsuit against Samsung Electronics Huizhou Company due to a loss of data caused by a boot-up failure by his newly purchased Samsung mobile phone. The lawyer, surnamed Luo, is requesting a refund, a compensation of 2,000 RMB ($296) and the recovery of the data.

Luo purchased the Samsung S7 on Oct. 23, and had his old data transferred to the new phone by an employee at the store where he purchased the phone. Luo claims the employee guaranteed the safety of the data. However, his new phone started to update automatically as it charged that night. Luo said the phone continued updating for almost two hours, and he had no way of getting it to start.

"More than 800 contacts, 500 chat records and hundreds of video clips are lost," said Luo.

According to the local Samsung service center, the phone's system can be fixed, but the data cannot be recovered because the latter can't be exported unless the phone is able to boot up.

After failing to reach an agreement with Samsung and the retail store where he purchased the phone, Luo filed a lawsuit against both at a local court. Requesting a refund of 5,799 yuan, a compensation of 2,000 yuan for diminished wages, and the recovery of his data, Luo said he would raise his claim to 50,000 RMB if the data could not be recovered.

According to Deng Xiaoying, a lawyer from Chengdu, an infringement did occur if the data loss was caused by automatic updating. However, the proper amount of compensation is hard to determine due to a lack of related laws and regulations.