The plaintiffs in the two consolidated cases against SB-419, Montana’s statewide TikTok ban, filed nearly simultaneous motions Thursday in U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula for preliminary injunctions to block Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) from enforcing the measure when it takes effect Jan. 1. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy’s June 28 consolidation order (see 2306290041) designated the May 17 complaint (docket 9:23-cv-00056) filed by six Montana TikTok influencers and users as the lead case, and the May 22 complaint filed by TikTok (docket 9:23-cv-00061) as the "member" case.
The FCC “reasonably exercised” its statutory authority when it decided the pole attachment rate Duke Energy charged AT&T was unjust and unreasonable, said the commission’s responding brief Thursday (docket 22-2220) in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to the Duke and AT&T consolidated petitions for review. The FCC also properly decided AT&T should pay Duke a pole attachment rate that’s lower than the rate in their joint use agreement but higher than the rate paid by other companies that attach their lines to Duke’s poles, it said.
The FTC’s first amended complaint still fails to “plausibly allege” Kochava’s practices cause or are likely to cause substantial injury to consumers under the FTC Act, said Kochava’s memorandum Wednesday (docket 2:22-cv-00377) in U.S. District Court for Idaho in Coeur D’Alene in support of its motion to dismiss. The FTC seeks an injunction enjoining Kochava from acquiring consumers’ geolocation data associated with unique persistent identifiers that reveal consumers’ visits to sensitive locations and selling it in a format that allows entities to track their movements (see 2305050026). Kochava contends there’s no way to determine whether a particular individual is at a particular place using the device identifier and geolocation data the company sells to third parties. Even taken as true for purposes of the pleading, said Kochava’s memorandum, the allegations in the first amended complaint demonstrate that substantial injury is still only “theoretically” possible. The court “has previously addressed this issue, dismissing the prior iteration of the pleading,” it said. The FTC’s own “word choices” suggest any injury is only “hypothetical,” it said. The first amended complaint offers nothing more than a “sheer possibility” that Kochava’s acts or practices “might create a hypothetical risk that third parties could identify consumers and cause them substantial injury,” it said. The FTC’s allegations don’t demonstrate “any purported privacy intrusion is sufficiently severe to constitute substantial injury” under the statute, said the memorandum: “The FTC’s own allegations confirm that Kochava’s data is not sensitive or private on its face.” The FTC also concedes that any purported identifying information revealed in Kochava’s data bank is “entirely inferential,” it said. Purported personal information ascertained by series of inferences isn’t “reliable information that can identify a consumer with certainty,” it said.
Core Communications’ toll-free access charges are “improper” because Core doesn’t actually “perform the functions that are required” to bill those charges under its own tariff policies and applicable FCC rules and regulations, said AT&T’s June 30 memorandum (docket 2:21-cv-02771) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in support of its motion for summary judgment. Core is seeking to recover $11.4 million in unpaid access services charges from AT&T, which refused to pay, claiming nearly 100% of the calls that CoreTel affiliates in Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia and West Virginia connected were fraudulent (see 2212280001).
Defendant Voyager Labs “built a business” on developing surveillance software that improperly relies on fake accounts to scrape data from Facebook and Instagram through “unauthorized, automated means,” said Meta’s opposition Friday (docket 3:23-cv-00154) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco to Voyager’s April 13 motion to dismiss (see 2304140003). Voyager seeks to dismiss Meta’s data-scraping complaint for failure to state a claim on which relief may be granted.
There’s “no realistic prospect” that four U.S. Supreme Court justices would grant Apple cert on the questions it raises in its motion for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the mandate in its decision to affirm the injunction barring Apple from enforcing its anti-steering rules against U.S. iOS app developers (see 2307050021), said Epic Games’ opposition Wednesday (docket 21-16506).
Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard buy will benefit gamers, employees and competition globally, “as multiple industry participants and antitrust regulators around the world have recognized,” said Activision’s answer Friday (docket 3:23-cv-02880) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco to the FTC’s June 12 complaint to block the transaction (see 2306120074). Activision’s answer followed a five-day evidentiary hearing that ended June 29 on the FTC’s motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the transaction from closing (see 2306150001).
Apple said Monday it plans to file a cert petition at the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmation of the district court’s injunction barring Apple from enforcing its anti-steering rules against U.S. iOS app developers arising from the antitrust litigation against Epic Games (see 2304250055. Apple’s motion (docket 21-16506) asked the 9th Circuit to stay the mandate in its decision, pending the resolution of its cert petition.
The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring, compelling or otherwise abridging speech “and protects private digital services’ decisions about what user content to publish or remove,” said an amicus brief Friday in two U.S. Supreme Court cases. The cases concern whether it's “state action” to restrict free speech when municipal officials or school board members block dissenting views on their personal social media accounts. NetChoice, the Cato Institute, Chamber of Progress and the Computer & Communications Industry Association filed the brief.
Walmart is well aware that telemarketing frauds “induce people to use Walmart’s money transfer services to send money to domestic and international fraud rings,” said the FTC’s complaint against the retailer (docket 1:22-cv-03372) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago, amended Friday to bolster the agency’s fraud claims under the Telemarketing Sales Rule. Walmart “continued to process fraud-induced transfers at its stores while failing to take sufficient steps to warn consumers of the risks and help them make informed choices,” it said.