A federal court temporarily shut down an international tech support operation last week, froze its assets and appointed a receiver after the FTC and the state of Florida alleged the business duped consumers "into spending hundreds of dollars for dubious computer 'repairs' and antivirus software," said the commission in a Friday news release. The FTC voted 3-0 to file the complaint in U.S. District Court in Chicago, which issued a temporary restraining order June 28 against the defendants, based in Florida, Iowa, Nevada and Canada. Named in the June 24 complaint were Big Dog Solutions, doing business as Help Desk National and Help Desk Global; PC Help Desk US, doing business as Help Desk National and Help Desk Global; and BlackOptek, among other companies. Named individual defendants include Christopher Costanza, Suzanne Harris, Muzaffar Abbas, Gary Oberman, Donald Dolphin and Justin Powers. They allegedly violated the FTC Act, telemarketing sales rule and a similar Florida statute, the commission said. The complaint alleged defendants caused "pop-up messages ... to be displayed on consumers' computers instructing them to immediately call a toll free number for technical assistance," which connected them to telemarketers in Boynton Beach, Florida. Essentially the pop-ups, which resembled messages from Apple and Microsoft, rendered the consumers' browsers "unusable," the complaint said. After consumers called, the telemarketers supposedly ran "diagnostic tests" on the computers and then would offer a $200 to $400 charge to fix the problems, and also push an ongoing technical support plan that could cost up to $19.99 per month, the complaint said. Boca Raton, Florida-based attorney Joe Grant, who represents only Big Dog, Costanza and Harris, emailed that his clients' business had closed down before the complaint was filed and a receiver has been appointed. "We are working with the FTC and the State of FL on an agreement relating to the injunction issues and asset freeze," he wrote. "We dispute the allegations in the complaint, which we deal with at a later stage in this action." Abbas, who is CEO of BlackOptek, didn't comment.

DOJ’s Tax Division went to federal court Wednesday seeking an order forcing Facebook to comply with six IRS summonses for documents in the agency’s investigation of the company’s tax liabilities for the 2010 tax year, two years before Facebook went public. Facebook has refused to turn over “the books, records, papers, and other data demanded in the summonses” about the company’s September 2010 transfer to Facebook Ireland of rights for its businesses outside the U.S. and Canada, said the DOJ petition (in Pacer) filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Facebook’s 2010 tax return “reported royalty income that I learned came from transfers of intangible property” to Facebook Ireland, said a signed declaration (in Pacer) from Nina Wu Stone, the IRS agent in charge of the investigation. The “preliminary” findings of an IRS “examination team” of outside tax experts “suggested” that Facebook’s “valuations of the transferred intangibles” may have been “understated by billions of dollars,” her declaration said. “Facebook complies with all applicable rules and regulations in the countries where we operate,” a company spokeswoman emailed us Thursday. Facebook acknowledged in recent SEC filing disclosures that it was “under examination” by the IRS for the 2008-2010 tax years. “We believe that adequate amounts have been reserved for any adjustments that may ultimately result from these examinations, and we do not anticipate a significant impact to our gross unrecognized tax benefits within the next 12 months related to these years,” Facebook said in January in its most recent 10-K filing at the SEC.

U.S. District Court in Boston entered a final judgment Friday in favor of Akamai in the company’s long-running patent infringement lawsuit against Limelight Networks, awarding Akamai $51 million damages. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in August that Limelight was liable for direct infringement of an Akamai-owned content delivery system patent (see 1508140059). The Federal Circuit’s 2015 en banc ruling, which remanded the case to the Boston district court, reversed an earlier circuit court decision from the same year. The Supreme Court ruled against the Federal Circuit in 2014 in Limelight v. Akamai (see report in the June 3, 2014, issue). The $51 million damages award announced Friday includes the initial $45.5 million damages a jury awarded Akamai in 2008 and $5.4 interest on the award, District Judge Rya Zobel said in the judgment (in Pacer). “We are extremely pleased after ten years of litigation to have a final judgment entered in Akamai's favor that recognizes Limelight's infringement and the harm it caused," said Akamai General Counsel Aaron Ahola in a statement. "We will continue to vigorously protect our intellectual property to maximize shareholder value." Limelight didn’t comment.

Dish Network, DirecTV and the Diego Beekman Mutual Housing Association Housing Development Fund agreed to drop their appeals and cross appeals before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said a stipulation (in Pacer) filed Wednesday with the 2nd Circuit. The appeals and cross appeals came after a judge for the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York in March granted the DBS companies' motions to dismiss the lawsuit but rejected their request for attorney fees and costs. Diego Beekman, owner of 38 apartment buildings in the Bronx, sued claiming the DBS companies installed satellite dishes without its approval and caused property damage as a result. U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in her ruling said the landlord failed to allege exclusive possession of the buildings, which would be required to maintain an action for trespass.

Charter Communications -- being sued by Frontier Communications over an advertising campaign making allegedly false claims about the robustness of its video, data and voice services (see 1606210013) -- is suing Frontier back. In a counterclaim (in Pacer) filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the cable ISP said that under the Lanham Act, which governs unfair competition, and various state laws, it seeks a court order stopping "any further false advertising" and any profit Frontier made from the ad campaign. In the 18-page complaint, Charter compared itself with Frontier, alleging the telco "has not made the same kind of network investment that cable operators like Charter have." It also pointed to the FCC annual Measuring Broadband America report as proof of its advertised broadband speeds and that Frontier's broadband offering is inferior. Frontier in a statement Tuesday said, "Charter’s recent ad campaign is false and misleading and does not accurately portray the competitive, high quality products and services that we provide our customers. We owe it to our customers, employees, and shareholders to defend ourselves against false attacks such as this and to ensure that our products and services are honestly and fairly represented at all times by all parties.”

NBCUniversal and Dish Network are calling off a pair of reciprocal civil lawsuits, including the last of the suits filed against Dish over its advertisement-skipping Hopper technology. A notification (in Pacer) filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Chicago said a stipulation (in Pacer) filed by Dish and NBCU meant Dish's breach of contract claim on screen crawls warning Dish subscribers of the possible dropping of NBC programming (see 1603150053) was being dismissed with prejudice and with each side bearing its own costs and attorney fees. Terms of settlement weren't provided. It followed a stipulated dismissal (in Pacer) filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by NBCU and Dish on NBCU's 2012 Hopper-related copyright infringement complaint against Dish. Terms of that settlement agreement also weren't made public. Similar ad-skipping suits by CBS and Disney settled similar in 2014 (see 1412100057) and by Fox earlier this year (see 1602110012).

While DirecTV's scaled-down request for complaints from the FTC Consumer Sentinel system is more proportional to the needs of the case, the agency might need to produce random samples of complaints from companies now no longer part of DirecTV's request, said U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James of San Francisco in an order (in Pacer) Thursday. The judge said the agency and the direct broadcast satellite company must confer to determine which companies' complaints the FTC will produce and an appropriate sample size for each company. DirecTV and the FTC have been fighting over consumer complaint documentation (see 1603090012 and 1603040021) as part of the commission's 2015 lawsuit against DirecTV for allegedly not properly communicating early cancelation fee terms to subscribers (see 1503110042). DirecTV had sought Consumer Sentinel data on 10 multichannel video programming distributors, with the court directing the parties to agree on a more limited production. In her order, James said DirecTV now is seeking all 231,802 complaints for Charter Communications, Comcast and Dish Network, while the FTC was proposing samples for three companies of DirecTV's choosing, and that the FTC sampling proposal "more closely comports with [Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26] demand for proportionality."

The DOJ urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to overturn the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's May ruling that whittled down the amount of damages that Samsung is required to pay Apple in a patent infringement lawsuit Samsung lost in 2012. The Supreme Court partially granted Samsung's petition in March for a review of the Federal Circuit ruling, which pared down the amount of damages Apple was entitled to receive to $548 million. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case only on the issue of determining damages, while Samsung also sought a review on the issue of defining the scope of what constitutes a patentable design element (see 1603210057). The DOJ didn't ask in its amicus brief for the Supreme Court to side specifically with either Apple or Samsung, instead urging the court to remand the case to the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. Further litigation at the San Jose court is needed because it's unclear based on the evidence presented whether Samsung has proven the damages Apple is entitled to should be calculated based on infringement of specific phone components rather than on the total profits from a phone, DOJ said. Samsung similarly argued in its opening brief that “at a minimum, a new trial is necessary.” Apple didn't comment on DOJ's amicus brief. A Samsung spokesman pointed to the DOJ brief as further evidence of the “overwhelming support” from outside parties in favor of the company's appeal of the Federal Circuit ruling.

Sony PS4s, Blu-ray players and digital TVs violate one or more among 10 Broadcom patents covering AV decoding methods and other technologies, alleged a complaint (in Pacer) against Sony that Broadcom and its Avago Technologies parent filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Avago two years ago acquired LSI Corp., including “its substantial patent portfolio,” the complaint said. The portfolio “covers innovative technologies developed by LSI as well as cutting-edge technologies invented by its predecessor companies,” including Agere, AT&T, Bell Labs and Lucent, the complaint said. “These companies were preeminent in the semiconductor industry and at the forefront of technological innovations in this and other areas.” Avago this year acquired Broadcom, “consolidating significant technological knowledge and substantial patent portfolios under the umbrella” of a new entity, Broadcom Limited, which is responsible for enforcing those portfolios, it said. “Sony has licensed certain portions of the patent portfolios of LSI and its predecessor companies for five decades,” it said. Sony’s most recent LSI license lapsed in 2014, it said. “Despite continuing to use the various technological advancements provided by the LSI patent portfolio, Sony has failed to compensate Broadcom for the use of these technologies,” it said. Broadcom “has made a number of attempts to resolve Sony’s continued infringement amicably and has engaged in extensive licensing negotiations with Sony,” but to no avail. Sony spokesman Mack Araki, in a Tuesday email, declined comment.

NBCUniversal's 2013 retransmission and affiliation contractual agreements with Dish Network don't contain any prohibition of screen crawls warning that NBC programming might soon be dropped from Dish's lineup, NBCU said in a filing (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in Rockford, Illinois, in response to Dish's breach of contract suit filed in March (see 1603150053). In its 16-page reply, NBCU denied all allegations of contractual breach and repeatedly referred the court to the twin agreements. Dish didn't comment Tuesday.