Telecommunications

  • July 22, 2024

    FCC, Industry Debate If Brand X Case Set Broadband In Stone

    Industry groups are pushing their case to the Sixth Circuit that the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules should be tossed because the demise of the Chevron doctrine trimmed agency's legal authority, but the FCC argues that the recent paring back of federal regulators' discretion means nothing for the agency's restrictions on broadband providers.

  • July 22, 2024

    FCC Blames AT&T Network Change For 'Sunny Day' Outage

    The Federal Communications Commission said Monday it will consider enforcement action after finding that an AT&T network change triggered a massive service outage in February, which blocked more than 92 million calls and 25,000 attempts to reach 911.

  • July 22, 2024

    Rail Biz Asks 4th Circ. To Revive Va. Broadband Law Fight

    The Association of American Railroads is asking the Fourth Circuit to step in and put a stop to a Virginia law that allows broadband providers easier access to railroad property, calling it a "supercharged eminent-domain scheme."

  • July 22, 2024

    IDT, Founder Say Straight Path Suit Fizzle Warrants No Fee

    Pointing to a Chancery Court finding of no damages after seven years of class litigation over a nearly $1.2 billion alleged liability, attorneys for IDT Corp. founder Howard Jonas on Monday urged a Delaware vice chancellor to reject a class attorney bid for a $9.5 million fee award.

  • July 22, 2024

    Native Villages Push For Injunction In Fed Broadband Row

    Two Alaskan tribes are urging a federal judge to step in and yank back $70 million in broadband infrastructure funds that they say the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave away to someone else after falsely marking them served.

  • July 22, 2024

    FCC Waives 5.9 GHz Rules To Allow For Smart Car Tech

    The Federal Communications Commission has voted to waive certain restrictive connectivity rules for cars, allowing automobile equipment manufacturers to make use of the 5.9 gigahertz band for Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything technology.

  • July 19, 2024

    Platform Sciences Hit With $19M Omnitracs Patent Verdict

    A California federal jury on Friday determined that Qualcomm spin-off Omnitracs is entitled to $19.3 million in lost profits and a $140,000 royalty after a former executive's new company willfully infringed one of its fleet management software patents, but cleared it of infringing two other patents.

  • July 19, 2024

    9th Circ. Judge Open To Reversing Google's Privacy Win

    A Ninth Circuit judge appeared receptive Friday to reversing Google's summary judgment win in Chrome users' proposed privacy class action, telling Google's counsel that the standard is what a reasonable consumer would expect and "you have a much higher opinion of the average intelligence of the computer user than I."

  • July 19, 2024

    House Republican Rips FCC's School Wi-Fi Subsidy

    A key House Republican with oversight of the Federal Communications Commission attacked the agency's new subsidy providing Wi-Fi services for school and library patrons, saying it will make consumer costs soar without helping education.

  • July 19, 2024

    More Airwaves Needed For Power Grid Upgrades, FCC Told

    Power companies are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to help free up more spectrum for utilities, telling the agency that opening up spectrum currently committed to public safety use could be a win-win.

  • July 19, 2024

    San Francisco Lawmaker Floats Rent Algorithm Software Ban

    A San Francisco lawmaker proposed a ban that would prohibit selling or using software that can be used for rent price fixing, and took aim at property management software companies such as RealPage and Yardi for their software allegedly being used for such a purpose.

  • July 19, 2024

    FTC Says Microsoft Price Hike Shows Activision Deal Harm

    The Federal Trade Commission told the Ninth Circuit that Microsoft's recently announced Game Pass price increase is an example of the harm caused by the company's $68.7 billion acquisition of game developer Activision Blizzard Inc.

  • July 19, 2024

    Taxation With Representation: A&O Shearman, Gibson Dunn

    In this week's Taxation With Representation, Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. buys Stelco Holdings Inc., KBR acquires LinQuest Corp., Blue Owl Capital Inc. purchases Atalaya Capital Management LP, and Amphenol Corp. buys two mobile networks units from CommScope.

  • July 19, 2024

    FCC Looking Into 911 Disruptions From Global IT Outage

    The Federal Communications Commission said Friday it was helping investigate 911 service disruptions that resulted from a global information technology outage that affected numerous industries, including telecommunications.

  • July 19, 2024

    UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

    This past week in London has seen a libel clash between comedian Paul Currie and the Soho Theatre Company over allegations of anti-semitism, technology giant Huawei face a patents claim by Mediatek, Westfield Europe pursue action against Clearpay Finance for contract breaches and tour operating company Carnival hit chartered airline Maleth Aero for significant flight delays. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

  • July 18, 2024

    Epic Says Apple's 'Strategic Delay' Tactics Still Ongoing

    The ongoing fight between Epic Games and Apple over the tech giant's compliance with a court order meant to open up app payment competition showed little sign of abating as Epic continued to blast Apple for slow and incomplete production.

  • July 18, 2024

    NTIA Gives FCC Routing Security Plan The Thumbs Up

    The National Telecommunications and Information Administration says it's speaking for the Biden administration in throwing its weight behind the Federal Communications Commission's plan to impose new security rules regarding the crucial routing technology used by the internet.

  • July 18, 2024

    Comcast Gets PTAB To Eye Patent Despite EDTX Trial

    The Patent Trial and Appeal Board on Thursday said it will look into a petition by Comcast asking it to invalidate claims in a patent organizing "content on a display device" that is tied to a $338.7 million jury verdict and is being asserted in another case set to go to trial later this year.

  • July 18, 2024

    State PUCs Urged To Keep Eye On Broadband Projects

    States need to step up and do more to ensure that telecommunication companies working on Rural Digital Opportunity Fund projects within their borders do the work they committed to doing on time, according to a former Federal Communications Commission official.

  • July 18, 2024

    FCC Votes On Party Lines To Subsidize Wi-Fi For Students

    The Federal Communications Commission voted along a partisan divide Thursday to expand a federal school and library subsidy to cover Wi-Fi services for students to remedy gaps in broadband access.

  • July 18, 2024

    CEO Firing Case Tied To Mogul Going To Mediation

    A former chief executive and a European IT company tied to convicted mogul Greg Lindberg will head to mediation as part of a back-and-forth case involving allegations of firing without warning and spending company money on women's lingerie.

  • July 18, 2024

    Urban Outfitters Freed From Class Claims Over 'Spy Pixels'

    A Pennsylvania federal judge said an Arizona woman lacked standing to bring a class action against clothing retailer Urban Outfitters over its alleged use of "spy pixels" to track customer activity because she failed to show a violation of that state's recording laws.

  • July 18, 2024

    Invalid Patents Sink Tech Co.'s Claims Against Lenovo

    A North Carolina federal judge has cut claims in an infringement suit over data transfer patents by wireless and video technology company InterDigital against Lenovo, finding some of the challenged patents are invalid.

  • July 18, 2024

    Del. Judge Overrules ViaTech's $34M Jury Win Against Adobe

    A Delaware federal judge has concluded that Adobe Inc. could not have infringed a ViaTech technologies licensing system patent, and threw out a jury's $33.8 million infringement verdict.

  • July 18, 2024

    FCC Caps Prison Phone Rates To Be 'Just And Reasonable'

    The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday placed new caps on prison phone rates under the Martha Wright-Reed Act, enacted to make sure that rates for incarcerated people and their families are "just and reasonable."

Expert Analysis

  • Series

    ESG Around The World: Canada

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    In Canada, multiple statutes, regulations, common law and industry guidance address environmental, social and governance considerations, with debate over ESG in the business realm potentially growing on the horizon, say attorneys at Blakes.

  • Lessons From Country Singer's Personal Service Saga

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    Recent reports that country singer Luke Combs won a judgment against a Florida woman who didn’t receive notice of the counterfeit suit against her should serve as a reminder for attorneys on best practices for effectuating service by electronic means, say attorneys at Jenner & Block.

  • The Section 230 Immunity Provision Debate Continues

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    The Fifth Circuit last month voted in Doe v. Snap Inc. not to reconsider en banc its decade-old interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally allows websites to police objectionable content as they see fit — but a growing number of judges appear motivated to further limit the scope of its immunity, say Jordan Rice and Caleb Hayes-Deats at MoloLamken.

  • Companies Should Beware Greater Scrutiny Of Subscriptions

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    The New York Attorney General's Office has been utilizing a severe interpretation of the law in enforcement against subscription services, as demonstrated in last month's Sirius XM complaint and Cerebral settlement — and this focus is representative of heightened subscription scrutiny in other states and at the federal level, say attorneys at Venable.

  • 5 Trade Secret Developments To Follow In 2024

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    Recent cases and trends in trade secret law indicate that significant developments are likely this year, and practitioners should be anticipating their impact on the business and legal landscape, say attorneys at Faegre Drinker.

  • What's On Tap For Public Corruption Prosecutions In 2024

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    All signs point toward another year of blockbuster public corruption prosecutions in 2024, revealing broader trends in enforcement and jurisprudence, and promising valuable lessons for defense strategy, says Kenneth Notter at MoloLamken.

  • Series

    Baking Bread Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    After many years practicing law, and a few years baking bread, I have learned that there are a few keys to success in both endeavors, including the assembly of a nourishing and resilient culture, and the ability to learn from failure and exercise patience, says Rick Robinson at Reed Smith.

  • 3 Key Class Action Trends To Use As Guidance In 2024

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    Telephone Consumer Protection Act, privacy and false advertising class actions saw significant shifts last year — including a trend toward expanding the application of preexisting laws to current technologies — that businesses should keep in mind to navigate the class action landscape in 2024, say attorneys at Mintz.

  • Federal Courts And AI Standing Orders: Safety Or Overkill?

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    Several district court judges have issued standing orders regulating the use of artificial intelligence in their courts, but courts should consider following ordinary notice and comment procedures before implementing sweeping mandates that could be unnecessarily burdensome and counterproductive, say attorneys at Curtis.

  • Fed. Circ. Cellect Ruling Triggers Significant Patent Risk

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    A recent data analysis shows that the Federal Circuit's decision of patent invalidity in Cellect presents a significant risk to patent holders with subsequent child applications, which may be unpatentable under the judicially created doctrine of obvious-type double patenting, says Curtis Altmann at Hoffmann & Baron.

  • 7 E-Discovery Predictions For 2024 And Beyond

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    The legal and technical issues of e-discovery now affect virtually every lawsuit, and in the year to come, practitioners can expect practices and policies to evolve in a number of ways, from the expanded use of relevancy redactions to mandated information security provisions in protective orders, say attorneys at Littler.

  • On The Edge: Lessons In Patent Litigation Financing

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    A federal judge's recent request that the U.S. Department of Justice look into IP Edge patent litigation, and that counsel be disciplined, serves as a reminder for parties asserting intellectual property rights — and their attorneys — to exercise caution when structuring a litigation financing agreement, say Samuel Habein and James De Vellis at Foley & Lardner.

  • 5 Litigation Funding Trends To Note In 2024

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    Over the next year and beyond, litigation funding will continue to evolve in ways that affect attorneys and the larger litigation landscape, from the growth of a secondary market for funded claims, to rising interest rates restricting the availability of capital, says Jeffery Lula at GLS Capital.

  • Expect National Security Scrutiny Of Higher Ed To Continue

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    In 2023, the federal government significantly elevated the national security responsibilities of academic communities, so universities and research laboratories should take a more rigorous approach to research partnerships, say attorneys at Crowell & Moring.

  • Breaking Down The New FCC Lead Generation Rules

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    The Federal Communications Commission's new rules to close the so-called lead generator robocall and robotexts loophole herald a transformative halt to the traditional lead generation industry, necessitating the development of entirely new marketplace solutions to align with the impending compliance requirements, says Alexis Buese at Bradley Arant.

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