Comcast: Injunction Needed ‘Forthwith’ to Hold MaxLinear to Chips Obligations

Comcast’s preliminary injunction showing “is virtually unrebutted” in its attempt to block MaxLinear from walking away from its contractual obligations to supply chips for Comcast’s broadband gateways (see 2305300045), said Comcast’s reply memorandum of law Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-04436) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan in further support of the injunction. A hearing on Comcast’s injunction motion is set for Sept. 13 at noon EDT (see 2307180044).

MaxLinear concedes it breached the contracts through its “attempted premature termination,” said the reply memorandum. It doesn’t even bother “to address, let alone dispute,” that Comcast is entitled to a declaration that MaxLinear’s attempted termination of the contracts is “ineffective” and they remain “in full force and effect,” it said. MaxLinear also fails to “meaningfully address” Comcast’s “substantial evidence” of the irreparable harm it will suffer if MaxLinear walks away from the contracts, “quibbling instead that Comcast has not yet suffered the harm it is seeking to prevent,” it said.

Rather than “grapple” with Comcast’s injunction application on the merits, MaxLinear “tries to avoid it altogether by endeavoring (and failing) to moot it,” it said. MaxLinear relies on a single statement in the declaration of its general manager-broadband that MaxLinear will provide Comcast with all of the services required until the contracts’ one-year notice period expires, it said.

But the court should reject “this made-for-litigation tactic,” said the reply memorandum. It fails to carry MaxLinear’s “formidable” burden to moot a preliminary injunction application in the 2nd Circuit, it said. It also leaves Comcast and its customers “exposed to the very risk of irreparable harm Comcast’s application is intended to prevent,” it said.

In “stark contrast” to MaxLinear’s prior commitment in this case to continue performing services and related contractual obligations as a condition of Comcast withdrawing its application for a temporary restraining order, those same assurances now are “nowhere” to be found, said the reply memorandum. MaxLinear also now suggests it won’t be bound by its obligation to keep Comcast and Comcast customer information confidential, “or to adhere to the 13 pages of information security protocols Comcast and MaxLinear agreed would apply to MaxLinear’s provision of services,” it said.

MaxLinear instead takes the “trust us” approach, said the reply memorandum. It effectively asks the court and Comcast “to have faith that MaxLinear will continue to support Comcast without any contractual obligation to do so,” it said. Comcast is hard-pressed to trust MaxLinear after it “brazenly breached” the contracts “by attempting to terminate them with no notice at all,” it said.

The “bona fides” of MaxLinear’s voluntary representation “are highly questionable at best,” said the reply memorandum. They also leave Comcast “critically” at risk, “with no recourse in the event MaxLinear decides at any moment that it no longer feels like providing a particular service to Comcast or that it will provide a service in a way that puts Comcast’s network or customer information at risk,” it said.

MaxLinear’s “latest tactic to avoid the consequences of its actions” should be rejected, said the reply memorandum. In light of Comcast’s showing that it’s likely to succeed on the merits of its claims, that it will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of the requested injunction, and that the equities and public interest weigh strongly in its favor, “Comcast respectfully submits that its requested injunction should issue forthwith,” it said.