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Telecommunications
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July 25, 2024
Meta, Snap Can't Ignore Murder Case Subpoenas, Court Says
Social media companies' ability to access and use their customers' information means they fall outside the scope of the Stored Communications Act, a California appellate court has ruled, rejecting Meta Platforms Inc. and Snap Inc.'s argument that the SCA's disclosure limitations mean they can't comply with subpoenas in a murder case.
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July 25, 2024
Google Wants To Keep 'Monopolistic Status Quo,' Epic Says
Epic Games assailed Google on Wednesday for overcomplicating and overpricing changes to the Play Store required by the gaming giant's antitrust jury win, arguing that what Google says are needed security and maintenance protocols are just the latest effort to relitigate the case and "weaken the remedy."
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July 25, 2024
Feds Unseal Indictment Against Fla. IT Worker in Spying Case
The U.S. Department of Justice has unsealed an indictment charging a Chinese-born American citizen with conspiring to act as an agent of the People's Republic of China, saying the PRC used the Florida information technology worker as a "cooperative contact" to support its intelligence goals.
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July 25, 2024
FCC Keeps Chin Up, But Chevron Woes Won't Soon Fade
After the U.S. Supreme Court term stampeded over long-established elements of administrative law this summer, the future of several major Federal Communications Commission initiatives was cast into doubt, but the agency says it's still optimistic it can navigate the new challenges.
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July 25, 2024
Cable Group Says Funds May Cover Less Under BEAD Rules
The funds the Biden administration has put into the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program should be enough to get most eligible locations connected if the National Telecommunications and Information Administration doesn't set any mandates on how much that service will cost after it's there, a cable trade group says.
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July 25, 2024
Advocacy Group Pushes FCC For Hearing On Fox TV License
An advocacy group accusing a Philadelphia Fox television station of knowingly airing harmful conspiracy theories following the 2020 election has told the Federal Communications Commission the group has collected more than 25,000 signatures from people saying the agency should grant a hearing on the subject of yanking the station's license.
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July 25, 2024
Justices Urged To Revisit FCC Fund After 5th Circ. Ruling
Free-market groups asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to take another look at their challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's low-income and rural subsidy programs after the Fifth Circuit ruled the system was unconstitutional.
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July 25, 2024
Samsung Might Not Control Face App Data, Ill. Judge Rules
An Illinois federal judge on Wednesday threw out a putative class action alleging facial-recognition technology in an application on Samsung smartphones and tablets violates the state's privacy law, saying while the company controls the app and its technology, there's no claim it receives the app's data or even has access to it.
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July 25, 2024
Divided FCC Floats AI Disclosure Rule For Political Ads
The Federal Communications Commission is moving forward with a proposal to require that radio and television broadcasters disclose when political advertising uses artificial intelligence.
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July 25, 2024
Ex-Pharma Exec's Counsel Accused Of Reading Stolen Emails
A New Jersey pharmaceutical startup wants to disqualify the "tainted" attorneys of a former executive who was allegedly caught spying on the CEO, claiming the attorneys should have immediately shielded their eyes when they realized their client was using stolen, privileged emails to carry out an "attempted shakedown."
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July 24, 2024
11th Circ. Says Nokia Unit Immune From Worker's Negligence Suit
The Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday declined to revive a suit against Nokia subsidiary SAC Wireless LLC by a worker who was electrocuted and seriously injured while helping remove a crane from a cell tower site in Georgia, ruling that the worker was an employee of a subcontractor, not SAC Wireless.
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July 24, 2024
Fed. Circ. Rejects Challenges To PTAB's Network IP Decisions
The Federal Circuit rejected an internet router-maker's bid to restore testimony that could have flipped two decisions at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, ruling Wednesday that the court won't revive ideas developed decades ago by a since-bankrupt tech company.
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July 24, 2024
DOJ Says NY Judge Muffed Standing In DirecTV Price-Fix Case
Paying inflated prices isn't the only way someone can be injured by price-fixing, and a New York federal court was wrong to rule that it was in a case brought by DirecTV over retransmission fees, the U.S. Department of Justice has told the Second Circuit.
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July 24, 2024
Intelsat Insider Trading Claims Don't Connect, 9th Circ. Rules
The Ninth Circuit on Wednesday affirmed a lower court's dismissal of claims accusing satellite company Intelsat stakeholders of insider trading, saying the suing hedge funds did not properly plead that the shareholders possessed material nonpublic information at the time of their trades.
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July 24, 2024
IPhone Users Push For Apple Docs On Korea, EU App Stores
Plaintiffs in the ongoing App Store antitrust suit are accusing Apple of stonewalling their effort to obtain documents detailing procompetitive changes the company made to the online marketplace in South Korea and Europe, saying the tech giant won't turn over the information because it'd undermine Apple's core defense.
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July 24, 2024
Senate Dems Demand Scrutiny Of T-Mobile, UScellular Deal
T-Mobile's plan to buy the wireless operations of yet another mobile network operator — this time, United States Cellular Corp. — several years after it was allowed to merge with Sprint to become the third biggest carrier in the country is a bad idea, a handful of Democratic senators have told the U.S. Department of Justice and FCC.
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July 24, 2024
Ex-AT&T Exec Wants Madigan Bribery Charges Dropped
A former AT&T executive who's accused of scheming to illegally influence former Illinois House speaker Michael Madigan's policy decisions argued that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent bribery ruling warrants chopping a conspiracy and bribery charge from his case.
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July 24, 2024
5th Circ. Strikes Down FCC's Universal Service Fund
The full Fifth Circuit struck down the Federal Communications Commission's system for subsidizing telecommunications service for rural and low-income users as unconstitutional Wednesday, reversing a panel decision and triggering a circuit split with three other appeals courts that upheld the fee regime.
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July 24, 2024
T-Mobile Plugs $4.9B Into JV With KKR To Buy Metronet
T-Mobile announced Wednesday that it has partnered up with private equity giant KKR to acquire pure-play fiber company Metronet in a joint venture that sees T-Mobile investing roughly $4.9 billion at deal close, in a transaction built by eight law firms.
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July 23, 2024
Knives Out For Another Pro-Agency Landmark After Chevron
Only weeks after U.S. Supreme Court conservatives took a hatchet to the judicial deference shown to federal agencies, right-leaning lawyers are imploring the justices to rock the administrative law realm again by gutting a New Deal-era precedent at the heart of the modern regulatory system.
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July 23, 2024
Nigeria Fines Meta $220M Over WhatsApp Privacy Policy
Nigerian regulators have hit Meta with a $220 million fine over alleged privacy and antitrust violations and ordered the company to stop sharing WhatsApp users' data with advertisers without express permission, the culmination of a nearly three-year-long investigative process.
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July 23, 2024
Microsoft Calls FTC Price Hike Claims 'Misleading' At 9th Circ
Microsoft pushed back against the Federal Trade Commission's contention that an increase in the company's gaming subscription pricing is evidence of the anticompetitive effects of the software giant's $68.7 billion acquisition of game developer Activision Blizzard Inc., calling the commission out for trying to "reinvent" its case against the merger on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
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July 23, 2024
US, UK, EU Antitrust Enforcers Outline AI Principles
The top antitrust officials from the U.S. Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, the European Commission and the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority presented a unified international commitment Tuesday to closely monitor artificial intelligence technology and the companies that they warned could wield AI anticompetitively.
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July 23, 2024
FTC Attys On Kroger Case Get Extensions After IT Outage
The administrative law judge overseeing the Federal Trade Commission's in-house challenge to Kroger and Albertsons' $25 billion merger has given the agency and the grocery behemoths two extra days on a couple of filing deadlines after the FTC said the worldwide Microsoft outage left several counsel laptops unusable.
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July 23, 2024
Judge Doubts CenturyLink Can Block Borrowed Allegations
A Colorado Court of Appeals panel Tuesday pressed an attorney for CenturyLink on why a shareholder can't use allegations borrowed from other cases in his own securities suit against the telecommunications company, with one judge saying that requiring plaintiff's counsel to speak to every witness would be going overboard.
Expert Analysis
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Questions Linger About DTSA's Scope After Motorola Ruling
The Seventh Circuit’s recent ruling in Motorola v. Hytera, which held that the Defend Trade Secrets Act applies extraterritorially, does not address whether an act that furthers misappropriation must be committed by the defendant in order to satisfy the law's extraterritoriality requirement, say Ilissa Samplin and Grace Hart at Gibson Dunn.
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Series
Being A Luthier Makes Me A Better Lawyer
When I’m not working as an appellate lawyer, I spend my spare time building guitars — a craft known as luthiery — which has helped to enhance the discipline, patience and resilience needed to write better briefs, says Rob Carty at Nichols Brar.
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Lead Like 'Ted Lasso' By Embracing Cognitive Diversity
The Apple TV+ series “Ted Lasso” aptly illustrates how embracing cognitive diversity can be a winning strategy for teams, providing a useful lesson for law firms, which can benefit significantly from fresh, diverse perspectives and collaborative problem-solving, says Paul Manuele at PR Manuele Consulting.
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Nat'l Security Considerations For Telecom Products Counsel
An increase in federal national security measures in the telecommunications space, particularly from the Federal Communications Commission, means that products counsel need to broaden their considerations as they advise on new products and services, says Laura Stefani at Venable.
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Class Actions At The Circuit Courts: July Lessons
In this month's review of class action appeals, Mitchell Engel at Shook Hardy considers cases touching on pre- and post-conviction detainment conditions, communications with class representatives, when the American Pipe tolling doctrine stops applying to modified classes, and more.
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7th Circ. Motorola Ruling Raises Stakes Of DTSA Litigation
The Seventh Circuit’s recent ruling in Motorola v. Hytera gives plaintiffs a powerful tool to recover damages, greatly increasing the incentive to bring Defend Trade Secrets Act claims against defendants with large global sales because those sales could generate large settlements, say attorneys at MoFo.
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Challenging Prosecutors' Use Of Defendants' Jail Phone Calls
Although it’s an uphill battle under current case law, counsel for pretrial detainees may be able to challenge prosecutors’ use of jail-recorded phone calls between the defendant and their attorney by taking certain advance measures, say Jim McLoughlin and Fielding Huseth at Moore & Van Allen.
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Opinion
Now More Than Ever, Lawyers Must Exhibit Professionalism
As society becomes increasingly fractured and workplace incivility is on the rise, attorneys must champion professionalism and lead by example, demonstrating how lawyers can respectfully disagree without being disagreeable, says Edward Casmere at Norton Rose.
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A Refresher On Calculating Political Advertising Costs
With election season well underway, it is important for broadcasters, political candidates, time buyers and others concerned with how the cost of broadcast political advertising is determined to know what the Federal Communications Commission factors into lowest unit calculations, and how the commission has defined "commercial advertisers," says Gregg Skall at Telecommunications Law Professionals.
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Series
Serving In The National Guard Makes Me A Better Lawyer
My ongoing military experience as a judge advocate general in the National Guard has shaped me as a person and a lawyer, teaching me the importance of embracing confidence, balance and teamwork in both my Army and civilian roles, says Danielle Aymond at Baker Donelson.
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Big Business May Come To Rue The Post-Administrative State
Many have framed the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions overturning Chevron deference and extending the window to challenge regulations as big wins for big business, but sand in the gears of agency rulemaking may be a double-edged sword, creating prolonged uncertainty that impedes businesses’ ability to plan for the future, says Todd Baker at Columbia University.
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A Midyear Forecast: Tailwinds Expected For Atty Hourly Rates
Hourly rates for partners, associates and support staff continued to rise in the first half of this year, and this growth shows no signs of slowing for the rest of 2024 and into next year, driven in part by the return of mergers and acquisitions and the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence, says Chuck Chandler at Valeo Partners.
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Opinion
Cell Tech Patent Holdup Is Stalling Automaker Innovation
Courts and Congress should seek to stem anticompetitive harm caused by standard-essential patent holders squeezing automakers with unfairly high royalties for cellular connectivity technology, says Charles Haake at Alliance for Automotive Innovation.
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Mitigating Risks Amid 10-Year Sanctions Enforcement Window
In response to recent legislation, which doubles the statute of limitations for actions related to certain U.S. sanctions and provides regulators greater opportunity to investigate possible violations, companies should take specific steps to account for the increased civil and criminal enforcement risk, say attorneys at Freshfields.
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Opinion
States Should Loosen Law Firm Ownership Restrictions
Despite growing buzz, normalized nonlawyer ownership of law firms is a distant prospect, so the legal community should focus first on liberalizing state restrictions on attorney and firm purchases of practices, which would bolster succession planning and improve access to justice, says Michael Di Gennaro at The Law Practice Exchange.