An Austrian civil court has rejected a privacy class action against Facebook because it lacked jurisdiction to hear the matter, the lawyer for the plaintiff spearheading the case said on Wednesday.

Law graduate Max Schrems and 25,000 other users are suing Facebook for various rights violations, ranging from the "illegal" tracking of their data under EU law to Facebook's involvement in the PRISM surveillance programme of the US National Security Agency.

The court in Vienna had ruled that it had "no jurisdiction on formal grounds" and therefore "limited its finding to procedural matters", a statement issued by Schrems and his lawyer Wolfgang Proksch read.