Monster is “aware” of the complaint in U.S. District Court in San Francisco accusing the supplier of false advertising in the merchandising of its high-end HDMI cables (see 1508270051), spokeswoman Sara Trujillo emailed us Friday. But Monster feels "very strongly that it has no merit,” she said. “We will vigorously defend this matter.” Best Buy, Monster’s co-defendant in the complaint, declined to comment.

Monster and its retailer Best Buy “misrepresent” that 1080p and 4K TVs “will not work properly” unless consumers use Monster HDMI cables with bandwidths of 18, 22.5 or 27 Gbps, alleged a consumer protection and false advertising complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The case is number 3:2015cv03885. “In fact, any HDMI cable with a bandwidth of just 10.2 Gbps can transmit all 1080p and 4K signals perfectly,” said the complaint, which seeks class-action status. Consumer Benjamin Perez, a resident of Orange, California, paid $189 for a Monster Ultra High Speed HDMI cable at his local Best Buy store because he believed Monster and Best Buy claims that such an expensive cable was needed “to transmit video signals to his television,” Perez’s complaint said. Perez “would have only been willing to pay a substantially reduced price for a Monster HDMI cable, had he known that the representation was false and misleading,” the complaint said. Monster places its “misrepresentations prominently and conspicuously on the packaging of every HDMI cable that it sells” in the U.S., the complaint said. “Best Buy affirms these misrepresentations at the time of sale.” Perez argues that “the false and misleading labels on Monster HDMI cables are highly material to consumers and serve to differentiate Monster HDMI cables from those of other manufacturers,” his complaint said. Those labels allow Monster and Best Buy to charge a hefty “price premium” for Monster HDMI cables, it said. Monster and Best Buy representatives didn’t comment.

Cablevision and Verizon agreed to an extension until Oct. 1 of a temporary restraining order in the companies' legal fight over an advertising campaign. U.S. Magistrate Judge Gary Brown in Central Islip, New York, granted an order requested by Verizon earlier this month, blocking any ads asserting Verizon is telling lies in its ads (see 1508120027). Cablevision sued Verizon in federal court in January over Verizon ads saying it offered "the fastest WiFi available." Both companies are to appear back before Brown Oct. 1 for a hearing, said a notice filed Monday in the case.

July's ruling by a federal judge bolsters the argument that stretching the definition of a multichannel video programming distributor to certain types of over-the-top providers is consistent with the Communications Act and Copyright Act, FilmOn X said in a filing posted Monday in FCC docket 14-261. The decision by U.S. District Court Judge George Wu in Los Angeles was that FilmOn X potentially was entitled to a compulsory license under Section 111 of the Copyright Act because it operates somewhat like a cable system (see 1507170024). The court also said the Copyright Office's opposition to extending a Section 111 license to Internet-based distributors "is not grounded in the statutory text or congressional intent, but instead is based on policy views," FilmOn X said. Given that, FilmOn X said it reiterated its support for the FCC-proposed reinterpretation of MVPD guidelines to include some online distributors of multiple channels of video programming.

Rocky Ouprasith, the 23-year-old owner of the file-sharing websites RockDizMusic and RockDizFile, pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Norfolk to one count of criminal copyright infringement, the Department of Justice said. Ouprasith admitted to operating RockDizMusic.com between May 2011 and October 2014 via servers in Canada and France. The Recording Industry Association of America ranked RockDizMusic as the No. 2 music piracy website in the U.S. in 2013. The website distributed digital copies of copyrighted songs obtained from “affiliates,” whom Ouprasith paid based on the number of times each file was downloaded from the site. Ouprasith admitted to operating the associated RockDizFile.com via servers in France, the Netherlands and Russia. He also admitted to ignoring complaints in 2013 and 2014 from copyright owners and their representatives and to pretending to take action in response to those complaints. The material on RockDizMusic.com and RockDizFile.com was worth more than $2.5 million, DOJ said. Federal law enforcement shut down the websites in October, while agencies in France and the Netherlands seized servers that hosted the sites’ material. Ouprasith is to be sentenced Nov. 17 and faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Panasonic and five other companies conspired to fix prices of linear resistors sold in the U.S., alleged a complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Jose. Almost all electronics products from smartphones to PCs to TVs “contain resistors, often hundreds of them,” and linear resistors are “the workhorse” of the resistor industry, said the complaint by Microsystems Development Technologies, which designs and develops microprocessor-based consumer and industrial products. Named with Panasonic as defendants in the complaint were KOA, Murata, Rohm, Vishay Intertechnology and Yageo. The complaint said the five are among the world's largest manufacturers of resistors. The defendants “used mechanisms designed to conceal their collusion, such as covert meetings, use of code words or terms to refer to competitors and/or customers, use of pretexts to mask the true purpose of collusive communications, use of non-company phones, and instructions to destroy emails evidencing collusive activities,” said the complaint, which seeks class-action status. All had “a common motive to conspire,” it said. “As resistors are commodities, price is the most obvious differentiation among them for purchasers,” it said. “In a market of this nature, with trillions of components being manufactured and sold a year at relatively inexpensive individual prices, there is a huge incentive to fix, stabilize, maintain and raise the prices of the components to supra-competitive levels through illegal conspiratorial agreements. By foregoing competition, each manufacturer could still guarantee themselves massive profits in such a high volume market. This anticompetitive conspiracy causes substantial harm to consumers, to competition, and to United States commerce.” The complaint emanated from reports that the Department of Justice launched a price-fixing probe of the resistors industry in mid-June, it said. Panasonic spokesman Jim Reilly in a Monday email declined to comment. The other companies didn't comment.

NAB, the New York State Broadcasters Association (NYSBA) and a group of American University Washington College of Law professors separately urged the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday to allow their amicus briefs in support of Sirius XM in the radio service’s appeal of the U.S. District Court in New York’s decision in Flo & Eddie’s performance royalties lawsuit. Flo & Eddie, who own the copyright to The Turtles' music library, including “Happy Together,” objected to a set of seven proposed amicus briefs from NAB, Pandora and others, saying several repeated Sirius XM’s arguments (see 1508170023). Flo & Eddie’s objections against NAB’s amicus brief only deal with issues raised in the brief’s last four pages, so attempting to strike the entire 30-page brief is “an overreach that this Court should not permit,” NAB said in a filing. “Flo & Eddie should not be permitted to avoid the entire contribution of an amicus who has demonstrated an interest in the case” based on objections to a minor portion of the brief, NAB said. “The majority of NAB’s brief presents its unique perspective, on behalf of the nation’s thousands of radio broadcasters, to the core issues in this case.” NYSBA’s proposed brief “is both relevant and desirable under the applicable standard,” the group said. “This case presents an issue of considerable practical importance, and amicus curiae NYSBA is particularly well-suited to provide additional insight into the broad implications of the decision below for the broadcast industry in New York.”

The “unprecedented and prolonged drop in scrap prices over the past year” figures prominently in Best Buy’s breach of contract complaint alleging its appliances recycler Jaco Environmental has failed to pay the retailer hundreds of thousands of dollars it owes in fees for hauling away and recycling discarded refrigerators and freezers (see 1508180060),Jaco President Michael Jacobsen emailed us Wednesday. Best Buy and Jaco “have been in the process of renegotiating appropriate pricing schedules for the markets we serve,” Jacobsen said. “We anticipate a fair and final resolution in the near future."

Best Buy’s longtime appliance recycler Jaco Environmental breached several agreements with the retailer by failing to pay Best Buy hundreds of thousands of dollars it owes in “rebates” for hauling away and recycling discarded refrigerators and freezers, Best Buy alleged in a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota. By failing to make payments to Best Buy, despite the retailer’s “repeated willingness to provide financial concessions and accommodations” to its recycling partner, Jaco’s entire debt to Best Buy is immediately "due and owing,” the complaint said. Best Buy “has operated an appliance haul away and recycling program” for more than a decade, and Jaco has been its appliance recycling contractor since 2009, the complaint said. “For customers who make qualifying purchases of appliances from Best Buy, Best Buy will take the customers' old appliances away and recycle them responsibly at no charge” to the public, it said. Under its contract with Jaco, Best Buy would pick up appliances from customers and bring them to one of a dozen Best Buy distribution or warehousing sites throughout the country, it said. Jaco “would pick up the appliances from Best Buy's sites, recycle them responsibly, and pay Best Buy a contract price -- a rebate payment -- for the appliances,” it said. Depending on the site location and the contract terms, the per-unit fees owed to Best Buy ranged from a low of $3.75 to a high of $28, court papers showed. Over the past year, Jaco “has repeatedly come to Best Buy asking to delay payment or reduce contract prices to be paid to Best Buy,” the complaint said. “Best Buy has agreed to accept late payments or reduced pricing on a number of occasions,” including through a contract “addendum” Best Buy and Jaco signed May 1, it said. However, except for a $160,000 payment Jaco made July 13, Jaco has defaulted on all its financial obligations to Best Buy, it said. Jaco representatives didn’t comment on the complaint, and Best Buy representatives didn't respond to email queries asking whether Best Buy has replaced Jaco with another appliance recycling contractor.

Advanced Digital Broadcast and HDMI Licensing agreed to a month’s extension to Sept. 4 in the deadline for HDMI’s response to ADB’s complaint (see 1507010017) that HDMI is “wrongfully” demanding more than $905,000 in back royalties and interest from ADB, a Swiss supplier to pay-TV operators of HD set-top boxes, residential gateway devices and other products. “Good cause exists” for the deadline extension because it will “give the parties time to engage in settlement discussions,” the companies said in a joint stipulation filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose.