T-Mobile’s “grossly negligent” and “reckless approach to security for SIM swap fraud” shows it tried “to profit from the problem rather than fix it,” argued plaintiff Seema Nair in a complaint (docket 5:22-cv-08030) alleging violation of the Federal Communications Act (FCA), filed Monday in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose.
Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Match Group and its affiliated dating websites collect, analyze and use unique biometric identifiers associated with people’s faces in photos uploaded to their apps and websites without disclosing or acknowledging the collection or requesting consent, alleged plaintiffs in a complaint (docket 1:22-cv-06924) that Match Group removed Friday to U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago from Cook County Circuit Court.
The online marketplace Letgo isn’t liable for the murders of a husband and wife who were killed when trying to buy a used car through the platform, the U.S. District Court for Colorado ruled in a Dec. 5 decision (docket 22-cv-00899). Though the court sided with the company in dismissing the case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Hegarty said Letgo isn’t entitled to liability protection under Communications Decency Act Section 230 at this stage.
The U.S. government hasn’t sufficiently made a case defending the Copyright Royalty Board’s Web V ruling on royalty rates for webcast music, said reply briefs Friday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from NAB, SoundExchange and the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee.
The Apple AirTag location transmitter is “the weapon of choice of stalkers and abusers,” alleges a class action (docket 5:22-cv-07668) brought against Apple in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose Dec. 5 by Lauren Hughes of Travis County, Texas, and Jane Doe of Brooklyn, New York, who claim to be victims of AirTag stalking.
The 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals should reverse the district court’s Aug. 2 decision granting Crown Castle summary judgment in its infrastructure legal fight with the city of Pasadena, Texas, said the city's opening brief Thursday (docket 22-20454). The minimum spacing and undergrounding requirements in Pasadena's design manual for Crown Castle's small-cell installations are “facially valid” and consistent with the city’s authority, said the city.
The U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit denied Nimitz Technologies’ mandamus petition to block a lower court’s demand for its financial records, saying in an order Thursday (docket 23-103) that it hasn't shown a clear and indisputable right to such relief. In so doing, the Federal Circuit also lifted the stay on the Nov. 10 order of U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly for Delaware to produce monthly bank statements and other documents that would enable the judge to determine the source of any third-party funding of Nimitz’s patent infringement lawsuits against Bloomberg, BuzzFeed, Cnet and Imagine Learning.
One of the first questions to emerge in January when Microsoft announced its proposed Activision Blizzard purchase for $68.7 billion in an all-cash deal was what would become of Sony's access to Activision’s third-party content support for the PlayStation 5 after the game publisher came under the control of the owner of the rival Xbox platform. The preliminary signals Microsoft put out for public consumption suggested Sony would experience business as usual, and that Activision, under Microsoft’s control, would continue supporting content availability across the “variety of platforms” it currently backs.
The U.S. Office of the Solicitor General thinks Gonzalez v. Google should be remanded to the lower courts to consider whether YouTube’s recommendations make its owner Google liable under the Antiterrorism Act, it said in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court Wednesday (docket 21-1333).