The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied Amazon’s mandamus petition to vacate the orders of U.S. District Judge Alan Albright for the Western District of Texas in Waco and transfer VoIP-Pal’s infringement lawsuit against Amazon to the Northern District of California (see 2211210049).

Apple unlawfully records and uses consumers’ personal information and activity on its mobile devices and apps for financial gain even after users indicate through device settings they don’t want their information shared, alleged a class action (docket 2:23-cv-70) Friday in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley for Northern California in San Francisco scheduled a further case management conference Feb. 23 on the surviving portions of the June 10 second amended complaint brought against Qualcomm by four California consumers. The original litigation dates back six years to when the FTC and a group of consumers brought similar, parallel actions alleging Qualcomm uses its position at the confluence between chip manufacturing and patent licensing to stifle competition.

Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Amazon and the Washington Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) exchanged dueling reply briefs Friday in Amazon’s constitutional challenge of the state’s workplace safety compliance rules (see 2211210088).

Health website Favor disclosed and allowed third parties to access users’ personal identifiable information (PII) without their consent, alleged a class action Thursday (docket 3:23-cv-59) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.

Thursday will be an important day in the antitrust lawsuit brought by 38 states and D.C. to break Google’s alleged monopolies in the Android app and in-app purchasing ecosystems. That’s when U.S. District Judge James Donato for Northern California in San Francisco convenes an evidentiary hearing into the states’ allegations that Google deleted Google Chat conversations and other instant messaging chats crucial to the states' case that Google's anticompetitive behavior harms consumers and app developers (see 2210170005).

The use by the University of California San Francisco Medical Center of Mega Pixel tracking technology in its My Chart online patient portal is an “extreme invasion” of plaintiff's and class members’ right to privacy and violates state statutory and common law, said a class action filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.

What makes Instagram a “profitable enterprise” for Meta “is precisely what harms its young users,” alleged plaintiff David Hemmer in a product liability and negligence complaint Thursday (docket 4:23-cv-00055) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. He brought the action on behalf of himself and his minor daughter, identified only as “M.H.,” asserting she's one of the young women “harmed by Instagram in just the ways Meta’s researchers anticipated.”

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana should dismiss the Biden administration’s attempts to throw out a lawsuit from Republican state attorneys general claiming federal officials colluded with Big Tech to censor social media information, AGs from Missouri and Louisiana argued in a filing Friday (see 2212080048) and 2211220054) (docket 3:22-cv-01213).