Discord cancels users’ subscriptions for its Nitro instant-messaging and VoIP social-media services “on its own volition,” and then continues to charge subscribers for months after the cancellation, alleged Zhea Zarecor’s class action Friday (docket 3:23-cv-05385) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco on behalf of herself and her 10-year-old son, plus all other consumers similarly situated.
The Nov. 1 decision of the U.S. District Court for Middle Pennsylvania in Harrisburg dismissing Smart Communications’ Sherman Act antitrust claims against Global TelLink (GTL) and York County Prison in Pennsylvania came about because the court “consistently misread” Smart’s complaint, said Smart’s attorney, Phillip Closius of Silverman Thompson, in oral argument Thursday before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Adobe and its senior executives, including CEO Shantanu Narayen, duped shareholders who owned Adobe stock between July 2021 and September 2022 by repeatedly downplaying “the competitive pressure Adobe was experiencing” from Figma, the supplier of “a simple web-based tool for designing user interfaces,” alleged a securities fraud class action Friday (docket 1:23-cv-09260) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in his Friday dissent (docket 23-411), scolded the SCOTUS majority for granting the government’s emergency application for a full stay in the injunction that would have barred dozens of Biden administration officials from coercing or significantly encouraging social media platforms to moderate their content (see 2310210001). SCOTUS granted the full stay Friday just as the administrative stay on the injunction was expiring at 5 p.m. EDT.
AT&T's, T-Mobile's and Verizon's 4G and 5G networks infringe a March 2021 patent (10,951,359) on an invention “for providing control resource set configuration” in a wireless communication network, alleged patent owner Asus Technology Licensing in three nearly identical, consecutively numbered complaints Thursday (dockets 2:23-cv-00486, 2:23-cv-00487 and 2:23-cv-00488) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas in Marshall. Asus complies with the intellectual property rights policy of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to license 4G- and 5G-essential patents on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms, said the three complaints. ETSI is also one of several standards-setting organizations that are “organization partners” of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, 3GPP, which “maintains and develops globally applicable technical specifications,” including for 4G and 5G wireless communication technologies, Asus said. ETSI developed and promulgated an IPR policy that’s intended “to strike a balance between the need for open standards on the one hand, and the rights of IPR owners on the other hand,” Asus said. In “an abundance of caution” and to ensure Asus’ compliance with ETSI's IPR policy, Asus informed each of the three carriers it was prepared to grant them an "irrevocable license" to the ‘359 patent on FRAND terms, said the complaints. Asus gave the carriers multiple opportunities to license the ‘357 patent, but the carriers haven’t “reciprocated” those “good faith efforts to negotiate a FRAND license,” they said. The carriers didn't comment Friday.
Plaintiff Marcelo Muto “willingly and proactively” signed up for J.Crew’s email list when he enrolled in its Passport rewards program, said the apparel company’s memorandum Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-07429) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan in support of its motion to dismiss Muto’s Aug. 22 California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) class action (see 2308230005). Muto alleges J.Crew uses the services of Bluecore, its third-party email vendor, to enable wiretapping of the electronic communications of visitors to its website.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should affirm the district court’s “sound, thorough, and well-reasoned” declaratory judgment absolving Charter Communications of any further monetary obligations under a 1964 revenue-sharing cable-permit agreement signed by the predecessor companies of Charter and Prewitt Management, said Charter’s responding appellee brief Thursday (docket 23-50419).
The FTC disagrees with the Oct. 13 assertions of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard that the recent U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) decision granting final approval of Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision buy and the subsequent consummation of that transaction provides a basis for the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court’s “affirmance” of the merger, FTC counsel Imad Abyad wrote the 9th Circuit clerk in a rebuttal letter Wednesday (docket 23-15992). "Contrary to" those Oct. 13 assertions, recent developments that Microsoft and Activision cited in their favor as resolving all of the FTC's U.S. competition concerns do nothing of the sort, said Abyad.
The seven residents of Belmar, New Jersey, who previously asked to intervene in Verizon’s complaint to force Monmouth County’s approval of an application to install nine small wireless facilities (SWFs) in the public rights of way (ROW) (see 2309280027) now seek dismissal of Verizon’s complaint, said their motion Tuesday (docket 3:23-cv-18091) in U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Trenton.
Oral argument Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Oregon in Eugene on the cross-motions for summary judgment over Lane County’s denial of AT&T’s application to build a 150-foot-tall cell tower (see 2210260009) focused prominently on the county’s assertion the federal court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case because AT&T failed to appeal the denial to the state’s Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) as Oregon law requires.