It’s website developers, not Meta, that choose to deploy the Pixel tracking tool and select which webpages the Pixel is integrated on and what data is sent to Meta, said Meta software engineer Tobias Wooldridge in a heavily redacted declaration Wednesday (docket 3:22-cv-03580) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.

Consumers’ Research's challenges to several of the FCC’s Universal Service Fund contribution factors may be an attempt to force a decision by the Supreme Court on the nondelegation doctrine, said academics and attorneys in interviews. Some said the group brought the exact same argument in multiple courts of appeals to forum shop and engineer a circuit split.

The Supreme Court should side with Meta in its lawsuit seeking to block an Israeli spyware company from allegedly accessing the encrypted messages of WhatsApp users, DOJ said in a filing last week, asking the high court to deny review in 21-1338.

An AT&T petition Monday in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa seeks to compel the production of documents from Voxon under a Sept. 19 subpoena issued by the U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in a case (docket 2:21-cv-02771) in which AT&T is a defendant. Core Communications sued AT&T there in June 2021, seeking the recovery of $11.4 million in unpaid access services charges, and AT&T said in the petition (docket 8:22-mc-00043) that the Voxon documents are “directly relevant” to its defense in the case.

Recent Texas laws preempting local governments in the right of way (ROW) are permissible under the state constitution, the state argued this week at the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals. Cities disagreed earlier this month that a lower court could uphold the rental rate caps in the state’s 2017 small-cells law without at least considering material facts. The Texas constitutional principle at issue here shouldn’t be foreign to other states, said local government attorney David Brown in an interview. “The expectation is that governments don’t give away property.”

Masimo and its Cercacor Labs subsidiary moved Monday for a final judgment against former Chief Technology Officer Marcelo Lamego and a permanent injunction barring him from further misappropriating Masimo’s pulse oximetry trade secrets, said their proposed order (docket 8:18-cv-02001) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Santa Ana. U.S. District Judge James Selna’s “finding of facts” ruling Nov. 7 also said Lamego breached his fiduciary duty of loyalty to Cercacor and he violated his employment agreements by keeping confidential information and documents (see 2211170034).

A lawsuit from Republican state attorneys general claiming Biden administration officials colluded with Big Tech to censor social media information should be dismissed because the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana doesn’t have jurisdiction and the AGs failed to make a “plausible” First Amendment claim, DOJ argued Tuesday in 3:22-CV-01213 (see 2211220054).

Communications Litigation Today is providing readers with the 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.

The FTC does not dispute that Meta is an American success story, said the agency Monday in its reply (docket 5:22-cv-04325) at the U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose to Meta’s Nov. 14 opposition to the commission’s motion for an injunction to block Meta’s purchase of Within Unlimited. But against the backdrop of Meta’s enormous growth, the company’s arguments that it could not possibly have developed its own virtual-reality dedicated fitness app “ring hollow” and are “just not true,” said the FTC.

Amazon’s Oct. 3 complaint alleging Washington state’s requirement to abate hazards in the workplace violates its 14th Amendment rights to due process is a lawsuit that “fails at the starting gate,” said the Washington Department of Labor & Industries in a motion to dismiss Friday (docket 2:22-cv-01404) in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle.