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Telecommunications
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November 04, 2024
High Court Questions If False Claims Act Covers FCC's E-Rate
Multiple justices seemed unconvinced Monday that the federal government plays such a limited role in requiring companies to pay fees for supporting telecom subsidies in schools that it can't seek to recover excess payouts from the fund under the False Claims Act.
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November 04, 2024
Ericsson Settles Cell Site Patent Case On Eve Of Texas Trial
Ericsson reached a settlement over cellular infrastructure patents on Friday, allowing Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to avoid a looming trial in Texas federal court over their use of the technology.
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November 04, 2024
Harris' 'SNL' Sketch Didn't Break Rules, FCC Spokesman Says
A Republican on the Federal Communications Commission is pushing NBC to follow equal airtime rules following Vice President Kamala Harris' appearance on "Saturday Night Live" just days before Election Day, but a spokesperson for the FCC chair says there is no foul play here.
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November 04, 2024
Patent Co. Looks To Combine Antitrust Case With Consumers
Patent-holding company VoIP-Pal.com is asking a D.C. federal judge to consolidate, at least for pre-trial purposes, its own Wi-Fi calling antitrust suit against Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile with a proposed class action it launched making many of the same claims.
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November 04, 2024
Religious Groups Want 5th Circ. To Toss FCC Diversity Form
Religious broadcasters are asking the Fifth Circuit to step in and stop the Federal Communications Commission from making them turn in diversity data, a recently reinstated policy that they say tramples on their First Amendment rights and pressures them to "engage in race- and sex-conscious employment decisions."
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November 04, 2024
Ex-Twitter Marketing Exec Denied $20M Severance, Suit Says
Elon Musk abruptly fired Twitter's chief marketing officer and denied her $20 million in severance benefits because she recommended Musk meet with an employee who disagreed with letting former President Donald Trump back on the platform, according to a suit in California federal court.
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November 04, 2024
NFL Stakes Out Appeal Rights In Sunday Ticket Antitrust Fight
While the NFL was able to overturn a $4.7 billion antitrust jury verdict against its Sunday Ticket broadcasting package, the league is nevertheless staking out an appeal at the Ninth Circuit in case the fight is turned on its head again.
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November 04, 2024
Bell Canada Paying $3.65B For US Internet Co. Ziply Fiber
Bell Canada has agreed to acquire U.S. internet provider Ziply Fiber for approximately CA$5 billion ($3.65 billion), Bell parent company BCE Inc. said Monday.
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November 01, 2024
Cloud Co. To Pay $300K Over FCC Subsidy Fund Paperwork
Cloud communication company Fuze Inc. is going to be shelling out $300,000 to the Federal Communications Commission for not following certain rules related to Universal Service Fund contributions, the agency said Friday.
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November 01, 2024
Electric Co-Ops Urge NTIA To 'True Up' Broadband Funding
Electric cooperatives want the U.S. Commerce Department to implement a "true-up" process to ensure that only locations still in need of reliable broadband match well with federal funds available under a $42.5 billion spending program to deploy service in unserved areas.
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November 01, 2024
Judge In Philly Inquirer Data Sharing Case Won't Join Class
The Pennsylvania federal judge overseeing a consolidated action accusing the Philadelphia Inquirer of sharing subscribers' video viewing habits with Meta is eligible to join the class, but has decided to renounce his right to class membership in order to continue being the judge.
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November 01, 2024
Up Next At High Court: Fed Funds And Securities Risks
The U.S. Supreme Court will return to the bench Monday for its November arguments session, which will start off with a debate over whether the Federal Communications Commission telecom subsidy program involves federal funds subject to the False Claims Act, and on Tuesday how Medicare funding should be calculated for hospitals that serve large numbers of low-income patients.
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November 01, 2024
ISS Advises Frontier Shareholders To Abstain On Verizon Vote
Proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services on Friday recommended that Frontier Communications shareholders abstain from voting on Verizon's planned $20 billion takeover, noting that there could be an advantage to waiting to see if the company can generate more value.
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November 01, 2024
US Must Revamp Spectrum Policy To Compete, Org. Says
The U.S. is on the verge of a "great strategic blunder" by allowing its spectrum auction authority to lapse and setting aside too much spectrum for short-range unlicensed wireless use, risking the loss of its competitive edge to China, a think tank says.
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November 01, 2024
Off The Bench: Horse Racing Ruling Halted, Fla. Betting Deal
In this week's Off The Bench, supporters of the organization overseeing federal horse-racing laws got a helping hand from the U.S. Supreme Court, the feud between a Florida tribe and state casino interests ends in a truce, and the NBA wants the details of its disputed media rights deal kept out of the public eye.
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October 31, 2024
Cable Cos. Seek Looser TV Blackout Reporting Rules At FCC
A major cable industry trade group is asking the Federal Communications Commission to scale back proposed blackout reporting requirements, arguing that heightened reporting mandates should only apply to blackouts of major network feeds.
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October 31, 2024
IP Forecast: Another Apple Watch Trial Kicks Off In California
Apple and Masimo will face off next week in their long-running feud over whether the tech giant misappropriated Masimo's trade secrets for some of the health-monitoring features used in newer versions of the Apple Watch. Here's a spotlight on that case — plus all the other major intellectual property matters on deck in the coming week.
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October 31, 2024
6th Circ. Wrestles With Reach Of FCC's Net Neutrality Powers
Sixth Circuit judges on Thursday sought to clear up what one described as a "close call" over how much authority Congress gave the Federal Communications Commission to regulate internet traffic when lawmakers overhauled telecommunications law in 1996.
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October 31, 2024
Madigan Ally Set Up Work For Speaker's Fired Aide, Jury Told
An ex-lobbyist on trial alongside former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan made arrangements for a political operative that Madigan fired to receive monthly payments while he was unemployed, suggesting he enter into contracts with loyal lobbyists and write up reports on legislators "in case the IRS checks this out," a federal jury heard Thursday.
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October 31, 2024
A Boeing Space Exit, $3B Hot Dogs And More Deal Rumors
Like the two astronauts currently stranded on the International Space Station, Boeing is reportedly looking to get out of space — by exiting its NASA business. In earthly news, foreign meat companies are reportedly eyeing popular hot dog brand Oscar Mayer at a price tag that could approach an arguably gluttonous $3 billion, and Blackstone could shell out five big ones — $5 billion, that is — for a cellphone infrastructure business. Here, Law360 breaks down these and other deal rumors from the past week.
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October 31, 2024
CBS Escapes Ex-Employee's Vaccine Bias Suit
CBSViacom/Paramount beat a former employee's lawsuit claiming she was fired because she requested a medical exemption to the company's COVID-19 vaccination policy, with a New York federal judge ruling she failed to fix errors previously identified by the court.
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October 31, 2024
Ex-Salesman Says CommScope's Bonus System Cut His Pay
Broadband company CommScope Technologies is facing a proposed class action alleging that its system for tracking commissions is flawed to the point that it does not accurately reflect the full incentive bonuses its employees have actually earned and that the company has knowingly let the problem persist.
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October 31, 2024
FCC's Senior Republican Blasts Bulk-Billing Restrictions
One-half of the Federal Communicatiions Commission's Republican minority is coming out strong against the majority's plans to restrict bulk billing for broadband services, saying that the commission was under pressure by the Biden administration to "raise the price of Internet service for Americans living in apartments by as much as 50%."
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October 31, 2024
Meta Users Fight Uphill For Cert., But Advertisers Have A Shot
A California federal judge who was asked to certify two classes in litigation alleging that Facebook parent Meta Platforms monopolized the social media advertising market and misused users' data said Thursday that the users' damage theory wasn't "plausible," but appeared open to the advertisers' claim they suffered the same alleged injury.
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October 31, 2024
What DOJ's New National Security Obsession Means For Attys
The Justice Department’s emerging criminal crackdown on corporate national security violations is putting increased pressure on white collar lawyers to be conversant, if not experts, on opaque, complex and swiftly evolving regulations.
Expert Analysis
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'Minimum Contacts' Issues At Stake In High Court FSIA Case
In CC/Devas v. Antrix, the U.S. Supreme Court must decide whether a "minimum contacts" requirement should be implied in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, with the potential to dramatically change the legislative landscape through the establishment of a new and significant barrier to U.S. suits against foreign states, say attorneys at WilmerHale.
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State Of The States' AI Legal Ethics Landscape
Over the past year, several state bar associations, as well as the American Bar Association, have released guidance on the ethical use of artificial intelligence in legal practice, all of which share overarching themes and some nuanced differences, say Eric Pacifici and Kevin Henderson at SMB Law Group.
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8 Childhood Lessons That Can Help You Be A Better Attorney
A new school year is underway, marking a fitting time for attorneys to reflect on some fundamental life lessons from early childhood that offer a framework for problems that no legal textbook can solve, say Chris Gismondi and Chris Campbell at DLA Piper.
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Opinion
This Election, We Need To Talk About Court Process
In recent decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has markedly transformed judicial processes — from summary judgment standards to notice pleadings — which has, in turn, affected individuals’ substantive rights, and we need to consider how the upcoming presidential election may continue this pattern, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.
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Series
Playing Diplomacy Makes Us Better Lawyers
Similar to the practice of law, the rules of Diplomacy — a strategic board game set in pre-World War I Europe — are neither concise nor without ambiguity, and weekly gameplay with our colleagues has revealed the game's practical applications to our work as attorneys, say Jason Osborn and Ben Bevilacqua at Winston & Strawn.
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Open Questions In Unsettled Geofence Warrant Landscape
The Fourth and Fifth Circuits recently reached radically divergent conclusions about the constitutionality of geofence warrants, creating an uncertain landscape in which defendants should assert and preserve the full range of conventional Fourth Amendment challenges, says Charles Fowler at McKool Smith.
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Antitrust In Retail: Why FTC Is Studying 'Surveillance Pricing'
The Federal Trade Commission's decision to study targeted "surveillance pricing" should provide greater clarity into the nature of the data aggregation industry, but also raises several issues, including whether these practices are in fact illegal under any established interpretations of U.S. antitrust law, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.
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Mental Health First Aid: A Brief Primer For Attorneys
Amid a growing body of research finding that attorneys face higher rates of mental illness than the general population, firms should consider setting up mental health first aid training programs to help lawyers assess mental health challenges in their colleagues and intervene with compassion, say psychologists Shawn Healy and Tracey Meyers.
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What 2 Key Rulings Mean For Solicitation Under TCPA
Two recent rulings from federal district courts in New York and California — each of which came to a different conclusion — bring to light courts' continued focus on and analysis of when an alleged communication constitutes a solicitation under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, say Felix Shipkevich and Jessica Livingston at Shipkevich.
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Series
Collecting Art Makes Me A Better Lawyer
The therapeutic aspects of appreciating and collecting art improve my legal practice by enhancing my observation skills, empathy, creativity and cultural awareness, says attorney Michael McCready.
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Secret Service Failures Offer Lessons For Private Sector GCs
The Secret Service’s problematic response to two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump this summer provides a crash course for general counsel on how not to handle crisis communications, says Keith Nahigian at Nahigian Strategies.
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Managing Sanctions Defense Across Multiple Jurisdictions
Companies called before multiple regulators to account for the same conduct in this era of increased global sanctions and import-control enforcement should consider national differences in law and policy, and proactively coordinate their responses in certain key areas, say attorneys at Baker McKenzie.
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Litigation Inspiration: Honoring Your Learned Profession
About 30,000 people who took the bar exam in July will learn they passed this fall, marking a fitting time for all attorneys to remember that they are members in a specialty club of learned professionals — and the more they can keep this in mind, the more benefits they will see, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.
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Opinion
AI May Limit Key Learning Opportunities For Young Attorneys
The thing that’s so powerful about artificial intelligence is also what’s most scary about it — its ability to detect patterns may curtail young attorneys’ chance to practice the lower-level work of managing cases, preventing them from ever honing the pattern recognition skills that undergird creative lawyering, says Sarah Murray at Trialcraft.
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Antitrust Issues To Watch Amid Google Ad Tech Trial
Regardless of the outcome of the U.S. Department of Justice's advertising technology antitrust suit against Google in Virginia federal court, matters ranging from market definition to unified pricing will likely have far-reaching implications for the digital advertising industry, competition and innovation, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.