U.S. District Judge James Donato for Northern California in San Francisco denied Google’s motion to exclude the testimony of the consumer plaintiffs’ expert witness, Georgetown University adjunct economics professor Hal Singer, from the Google Play Store antitrust class action, said his order Monday (docket 3:21-md-02981). Donato also granted, “in main part,” the consumers’ motion for class certification, “subject to some adjustments of the named plaintiffs,” his order said. The consumer plaintiffs allege Google illegally monopolized the Android app distribution market with anticompetitive practices in the Google Play Store. Google doesn’t suggest Singer is unqualified to be an expert witness on economics, said the order. Its main objection is over Singer’s “pass-through formula,” it said: “The formula is an essential element of his opinions about Google’s overcharges in app sales, and the artificially inflated prices consumers paid as a consequence.” But Google “has not demonstrated that unreliability or invalidity warrant exclusion” of Singer’s opinions, said Donato’s order. The plaintiffs rely heavily on Singer’s analysis “as their common method of proving antitrust impact” to consumers, and that was the class certification argument “most hotly contested by Google,” it said.
Sony Interactive Entertainment, a nonparty to the FTC’s lawsuit to block Meta’s Within Unlimited buy on antitrust grounds (see 2211010045), wants the U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose to maintain the secrecy of confidential SIE information contained in Meta's administrative motion that was filed provisionally under seal on Nov. 18, said its statement Friday (docket 5:22-cv-04325). The protected material includes SIE’s “internal-only project codename” for its unreleased PlayStation VR2, plus references to “a highly confidential strategy document that SIE uses to develop its competitive, marketing, and business strategies” for the forthcoming product, it said. SIE uses secret code names “to strictly limit internal disclosure of sensitive information, ensuring that discussion of a project cannot be traced to the specific product in development,” it said. “If this project codename were made available to the public, it would greatly increase the risk that other highly confidential material related to the PSVR2 could become public.” Public disclosure of the confidential information about the PSVR2 “would undermine the time and resources SIE has devoted to its product and marketing development, give competitors an unfair advantage in the marketplace, and disrupt the imminent commercial launch of PSVR2 in February 2023,” said SIE.
Counsel for Appen Media Group, the last of 25 newspaper owners to have its antitrust complaint against Google transferred to U.S. District Court for Southern New York for consolidation under Judge Kevin Castel, wrote the judge Tuesday (docket 1:22-cv-09810), seeking permission to be included with the other 24 when they file their amended complaint against Google by the Dec. 2 deadline. The various newspaper owners’ lawsuits allege that Google has monopolized the digital advertising market, thereby strangling a primary source of revenue for newspapers across the country. Castel granted the owners leave Nov. 18 to file the amended complaint. When the other 24 owners filed their motion for leave to enter an amended complaint, Appen’s case was stuck in “procedural limbo” before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, said lawyer David Mitchell with Robbins Geller. Now that the Appen action has been transferred to Castel’s jurisdiction, Mitchell would represent all 25 newspaper plaintiffs in “a single pleading,” he said. Family-owned Appen owns several newspapers in Georgia, Mitchell told the judge.
California’s antitrust complaint against Amazon was granted “complex designation” status and assigned to Judge Ethan Schulman, said an order Wednesday (docket CGC-22-601826) in California Superior Court in San Francisco. Schulman scheduled a case management conference Jan. 4 at 10 a.m. PST, and ordered the parties to file a joint case management statement at least five court days in advance. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, in a heavily redacted Sept. 15 complaint, alleged Amazon "makes consumers think they are getting the lowest prices possible, when in fact, they cannot get the low prices that would prevail in a freely competitive market" (see 2210130034). He alleged Amazon "coerced and induced its third-party sellers and wholesale suppliers to enter into anticompetitive agreements on price."
Within Unlimited supports maintaining under seal portions of the FTC’s Nov. 18 administrative motion in the agency’s lawsuit to block Meta’s Within buy, said its statement Wednesday (docket 5:22-cv-04325) in U.S. District Court for Northern California for Los Angeles. Within’s submission “significantly narrows the information that would be maintained under seal,” it said. The proposed redactions “reflect Within’s good-faith effort to seek sealing of only that information which is competitively sensitive and cannot be protected from public disclosure through any less restrictive means,” it said. “Within joins in Meta’s requests to protect its confidential information contained in the document at issue.”
California Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow in San Francisco denied without prejudice Amazon’s motion to keep sealed portions of a California complaint alleging the company skirted antitrust and unfair competition laws (see 2210130034), said an order he signed Friday (docket CGC-22-601826). The Oct. 11 declaration from Cristina Fernandez, Amazon corporate counsel-competition, in support of the motion to seal was flawed because “it does not tie a rationale for redactions to any specific redaction, leaving it to the court to guess which rationale supports which specific redaction,” said Karnow’s order. He cautioned Amazon that “literally every word sought to be redacted must be shown to be confidential information subject to sealing.” The complaint remains “provisionally under seal,” pending Amazon’s renewed motion to seal, said the judge. California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) filed the heavily redacted complaint Sept. 15, alleging Amazon "makes consumers think they are getting the lowest prices possible, when in fact, they cannot get the low prices that would prevail in a freely competitive market." That's because Amazon "has coerced and induced its third-party sellers and wholesale suppliers to enter into anticompetitive agreements on price," said Bonta.
Virtual-reality company Valve, a nonparty to the FTC’s litigation to block Meta’s Within Unlimited buy (see 2210140002), wants the U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose to maintain under seal the “highly confidential material” in the reports of two Meta expert witnesses, Dennis Carlton and Michael Zyda, said the company’s statement Friday (docket 5:22-cv-04325). Portions of both reports contain nonpublic R&D and business information regarding Valve’s “continuing development of its VR technology and products,” it said. Disclosure of this information “could cause competitive harm to Valve by revealing Valve’s R&D and business strategies to competitors in the VR hardware market, thus undercutting Valve’s position in the marketplace,” it said. Valve “does not disclose or share this information outside the company, particularly to any competitor,” it said. The company “has expended significant resources and implemented strict measures to prevent disclosure of the confidential information” contained in the expert reports, “including by storing such information under password protection on internal Valve servers, limiting access to certain of the information described above to certain Valve employees with a specific need to know, and not making such information publicly available.”
U.S. District Judge James Donato for Northern California in San Francisco wants to hold an evidentiary hearing on one of three dates to address the discovery dispute over Google's electronic chat data in the multistate antitrust lawsuit over Android software app distribution, said a text-only order Wednesday (docket 3:21-cv-05227). Donato wants the parties’ consensus by Nov. 28 about whether the hearing should be held Jan. 10 at 10 a.m. PST, Jan. 11 at 10 a.m. PST or Jan. 12 at 1:30 p.m. PST, said his order. Both sides will confer on a joint proposed witness list with testimony topics that will be due seven court days before the hearing date, he said. Donato anticipates testimony by Google witnesses about the use and operation of the electronic chat system, including storage and deletion policies, guidelines for chat content, and examples of typical chat communications. Google will present this information through direct examinations of the witnesses, and plaintiffs will cross-examine. Roughly three dozen states plus the District of Columbia sued in July 2021 to enjoin Google from unlawfully restraining trade and maintaining monopolies in the markets for Android software app distribution and for payment processing of digital content purchased within Android apps in the U.S.
The July 22 complaint in which Appen Media, owner and operator of several newspapers in Georgia, alleged Google and Meta have “monopolized the digital advertising market thereby strangling a primary source of revenue for newspapers across the country,” was transferred Tuesday to the U.S. District Court for Southern New York, to be consolidated with similar cases. The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, in a conditional transfer order Nov. 2 (docket 3010), said the panel transferred 18 cases to the Southern District of New York in August 2021 for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings, and that 11 more cases had since been transferred there. The Appen Media v. Google action appears to involve “questions of fact that are common to the actions previously transferred” and consolidated under U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel for the Southern District of New York, said the panel.
Google’s excuses for its “ongoing destruction” of daily chats as evidence in Utah’s multistate antitrust lawsuit against Google’s app store (see 2204010037) don't “remotely pass muster,” said the states’ reply Thursday (docket 3:21-cv-05227) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco in support of their motion for “significant sanctions” against the company. Google’s argument that its efforts were “reasonable” is “irreconcilable with the systematic and avoidable destruction” of relevant chats, plus “its continued failure to explain why it did not suspend automatic deletion, including after being expressly put on notice,” they said. Google’s argument that it lacked the “requisite intent” ignores that Google still, to this day, continues the wholesale destruction of chats, that it withheld information about the destruction of chats for months, and that its custodians “intentionally divert sensitive conversations” to chat to avoid discovery, they said.