The U.S. Court of International Trade is limiting in-person attendance at Tuesday’s oral argument in the Section 301 cases, “due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic" and to "facilitate social distancing in the courtroom,” said a procedural order signed Thursday by Chief Judge Mark Barnett. An audio feed of the 10 a.m. proceeding will be livestreamed on YouTube, the order said. The court joined the federal judiciary’s “pilot” program in the fall to broadcast in-person proceedings on a dedicated YouTube channel (see 2111110008). Thousands of Section 301 cases all seek to vacate the Lists 3 and 4A tariffs on Chinese imports and get the paid duties refunded with interest.

Three Michigan men pleaded guilty to defrauding Amazon by leasing textbooks through Amazon’s rental program and selling them for profit on the internet and through local bookstores, said DOJ Wednesday. Paul Larson, 32, of Kalamazoo, and Gregory Gleesing, 43, and Lovedeep Singh Dhanoa, 25, both of Portage, participated with ringleader Geoffrey Mark Talsma, 36, also of Kalamazoo, in a scheme to create numerous Amazon accounts using fake names, multiple street addresses and multiple email accounts to circumvent Amazon’s limit of 15 textbook rentals per customer, said DOJ. Talsma is scheduled to stand trial April 5 in U.S. District Court in Lansing on mail fraud and other charges, it said. The other three are scheduled for sentencing in May and June, facing up to 20 years each in federal prison, said DOJ. All will also be ordered to pay restitution to Amazon, it said. Efforts to reach attorneys for the four Thursday were unsuccessful. Amazon didn’t comment.

In-person oral argument in the Section 301 cases is scheduled for Tuesday at 10 a.m. in the Ceremonial Courtroom of the U.S. Court of International Trade, confirmed the court in an amended courthouse activities report Tuesday. A previously posted report dated Monday had the Section 301 oral argument missing from the schedule. Mindful of the enormous attention the litigation has generated through the thousands of cases filed, the court said in a Nov. 12 scheduling order that it “anticipates that in-person attendance will be limited,” but a remote audio feed will be provided. All the cases seek to have the Lists 3 and 4A tariffs on Chinese imports vacated and the paid duties refunded with interest. Lawyers with active Section 301 cases told us they think the Ceremonial Courtroom was chosen for its size and historical significance, having played host to oral argument in the harbor maintenance tax case after which some of the Section 301 case management procedures were fashioned. The lawyers speculated the Ceremonial Courtroom holds more than twice the gallery of any of the other regular courtrooms, and was picked to promote better social distancing.

Dolby objects to LG’s “late-breaking request” for discovery in support of its motion for a 14-day temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Dolby, attorney William Michael of Paul Weiss wrote U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty of Manhattan Tuesday. LG alleges Dolby violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and unfair-competition laws by reneging on commitments Dolby made to ATSC to license its AC-4 audio codec patents for NextGenTV on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms (see 2201090001). With so many redactions in LG’s memorandum of law in support of its TRO/PI, it’s virtually impossible for the public to identify the allegedly harmful Dolby conduct that LG is asking the court to enjoin. Dolby’s response to LG’s TRO/PI motion is due Monday. “At no point before last Friday” did LG even raise the possibility of seeking discovery on its motion, said Michael. “Now, on the eve of Dolby filing its opposition,” LG “all of a sudden thinks discovery is necessary,” he said. “Perhaps in the intervening month” since LG filed for the TRO/PI, its “confidence in its motion has wavered,” he said. “Whatever the motivation behind its request, the Court should not even consider it at this stage.” LG “has never provided any details about the discovery it wants to take, on what timeline it would occur,” or why it waited until now “to even raise the topic,” he said. LG attorneys didn’t comment.

LG's ThinQ smart thermostats and HVAC systems infringe three EcoFactor patents (8,019,567, 8,740,100 and 10,534,382) on energy efficiency control technologies, the oldest of the three dating to September 2011, alleged the supplier of smart home energy management services in a complaint Friday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California. EcoFactor “transformed how homes use energy by applying advanced analytics to connected devices in the home,” said the complaint. “The patented innovations at issue in this action were invented by EcoFactor engineers and researchers.” The company has spent “tens of millions of dollars” on R&D and “technical services and support,” but in recent years, “an explosion of imported products” that infringe EcoFactor’s patents “has significantly eroded EcoFactor’s market standing in the United States,” it said. The suit seeks damages, plus a permanent injunction prohibiting LG “from further acts of infringement,” it said. LG didn’t comment.

Google deceived and manipulated consumers while tracking their location data and made it “nearly impossible” to opt out, four attorneys general alleged in separate lawsuits Monday. Despite assurances users could opt out, there's “effectively no way for consumers to prevent Google from collecting, storing, and profiting from their location data,” alleged Washington, D.C., AG Karl Racine. His complaint detailed behavior dating back to at least 2014, including reliance on "dark patterns," or manipulative tactics. AGs in Texas, Washington and Indiana sued in their states. Google tells users they can turn off location history, but the company “continues to track users’ location through other settings and methods that it fails to adequately disclose,” said the office of Texas AG Ken Paxton (R). Google has “prioritized profits over people,” said Indiana's Todd Rokita (R). Washington state's Bob Ferguson (D) cited “hard-to-find location settings, misleading descriptions of location settings, repeated nudging to enable location settings and incomplete disclosures of Google’s location data collection.” The cases are “based on inaccurate claims and outdated assertions about our settings,” a Google spokesperson emailed. “We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We will vigorously defend ourselves and set the record straight.”

Contrary to the Jan. 10 notice of supplemental authorities from Section 301 test case lawyers Akin Gump that two recent Court of International Trade decisions bolster their arguments that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative violated the 1974 Trade Act and 1946 Administrative Procedure Act when it imposed the Lists 3 and 4A tariffs on Chinese imports (see 2201110004), “neither decision is ‘pertinent’ nor ‘significant’ to plaintiffs’ claims,” responded DOJ Thursday in docket 1:21-cv-52. Section 307 of the Trade Act “unambiguously supports that the word ‘modify’ permits an increase in tariffs,” as the government contends in the Section 301 case, said DOJ. “To imply a limitation permitting only a decrease in tariffs would be inconsistent” with Section 307, “and would require adding language that Congress omitted” in the statute, it said. The APA issues discussed in a second decision, Invenergy Renewables v. U.S., in which the court found USTR violated the statute by not addressing “significant comments” raised by the public, “are easily distinguishable from this case,” said DOJ. The significant comments the court determined were unaddressed in Invenergy “concerned the USTR’s authority to withdraw a previously-granted exclusion,” plus “other statutory considerations,” it said. In the Section 301 case, USTR “plainly addressed its statutory authority for issuing List 3 and List 4 and the objective of eliminating China’s unfair trade practices,” it said. Neither decision “constitutes persuasive authority that supports granting judgment for the plaintiffs,” said DOJ. Oral argument is scheduled for Feb. 1.

Texas sued Google for allegedly engaging in false, misleading and deceptive practices. In a Wednesday complaint at Texas District Court in Montgomery County, Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) claimed Google violated a Texas consumer protection law when it allegedly forced iHeartMedia DJs to record and broadcast firsthand testimonials for the then-unreleased Pixel 4, despite the DJs never having used the smartphone. Texas seeks a court order requiring Google to stop and pay monetary penalties. “This is not the first time I have had to address bad behavior by Big Tech companies,” said Paxton. Google “will review the complaint but the AG’s allegations appear to misrepresent what occurred here," a spokesperson emailed. "We take compliance with advertising laws seriously and have policies in place designed to help ensure we follow relevant regulations and industry standards.”

Design deficiencies in Apple’s Powerbeat Pro wireless earbuds and their charging case cause “a significant percentage of users” to experience “battery draining and charging issues,” limiting the product’s “functionality and usage,” alleged New Yorker Alejandro Vivar in a fraud complaint (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that seeks class-action status. Vivar bought the earbuds at a Best Buy store in the Bronx, believing their battery would last for the nine hours of listening time promised in Apple’s ads, and that both earbuds “would charge and maintain their charges equally,” unaffected by perspiration, said the complaint. But perspiration causes the charging contacts on the earbuds and in the case to corrode, “which contributes to a failure to charge,” it said. Customers who contact Apple about the corrosion are told it's due to “liquid ingress, which would be sweat,” it said. Apple will then “rely on its terms and conditions which purport to void any warranties based on liquid ingress, and the only option will be to pay for a costly repair,” the complaint said. Apple makes other misleading “representations” about the product, and “reasonable consumers must and do rely on a company to honestly identify and describe the components, attributes, and features of a product, relative to itself and other comparable products or alternatives,” the suit said. It alleges violations of the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and breaches of California and New York consumer fraud laws. Apple didn’t comment Friday.

The Judicial Conference "has serious concerns" with the Open Courts Act (HR-5844) and wants "meaningful two-way dialogue" with the House Judiciary Committee about revisions to the bill before the committee acts on it, Judicial Conference Secretary Roslynn Mauskopf said in a letter dated Tuesday and released Thursday to House Subcommittee on Courts Chairman Hank Johnson, D-Ill. Johnson sponsored the bill. The legislation "may unduly constrain" the courts systems' ongoing update of Public Access to Court Electronic Records (Pacer) and the case management and electronic case files systems (CM/ECF), said Mauskopf, U.S. District judge in Brooklyn. She said that disagreements over aspects of the bill include judiciary opposition to increased filing fees and that while the judiciary isn't a fan of eliminating all Pacer fees, "we are not opposed ... in principle, so long as the alternative funding for PACER and CM/ECF is fair to litigants, effective, reliable, and administratively workable."