Liability policy insurers Navigators and Arch are in breach of contract for refusing to cover Vizio’s costs defending itself against dozens of smart TV class-action privacy lawsuits, alleged Vizio in a complaint (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The 29 class actions began in November 2015, alleging the “smart interactivity” feature on Vizio smart TVs violates the Video Privacy Protection Act because it tracks the content viewers are consuming, links the data with their IP addresses and sells the data to marketing companies (see 1512060005). The lawsuits stemmed from Vizio’s July 2015 initial public offering, never consummated, in which it boasted that its Inscape data platform captures smart TV viewing behavior better than any previous service (see 1507260001). The class actions were consolidated into a single case in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, where a judge approved a final settlement agreement in July 2019. The agreement required Vizio to establish a $17 million settlement fund, plus make available prominent on-screen disclosures and opt-out forms about Inscape data collection. Vizio paid $2.2 million in February 2017 to settle similar allegations at the FTC (see 1702060042). Navigators and Arch, using technicalities in their policies, walked away from their “obligations” to cover Vizio for the settlement fund or its “defense costs,” said the Los Angeles complaint. Navigators “disclaimed such an obligation,” while Arch never responded to Vizio’s "notice of claim of defense,” it said. Vizio seeks compensatory and punitive damages, plus a court declaration that the insurers are responsible for their obligations. Navigators and Arch didn’t comment Friday.

Dish Network and Cox Media Group blamed each other for 14 local CMG stations in 10 markets going dark on Dish's lineup Wednesday after the end of a temporary restraining order previously awarded to Dish. U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin of Chicago earlier this week rejected Dish's ask for a temporary restraining order against Cox pending U.S. Circuit Court appeal (in Pacer, docket 20-CV-00570). Dish said CMG rejected an offer of extending the current carriage agreement at higher rates while the two negotiate, but the programmer demanded a 40% rate increase. Stations in Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Washington and Oklahoma went dark, Dish said. Dish is appealing to the 7th Circuit Durkin's earlier denial of a motion for a preliminary injunction and dissolving a TRO against CMG. The MVPD sued CMG and Apollo Global Management alleging breach of contract for Dish's retransmission of the local TV signals of CMG stations. CMG said Dish's "misguided efforts [are] to avoid agreeing to reach a fair market carriage agreement." It said Dish pulled the CMG stations, and it offered an extension so they could continue to negotiate.

Huawei questioned the federal charges DOJ filed against it in the Eastern District of New York, in a Tuesday letter to Judge Ann Donnelly. “How the United States government as a whole regards the Huawei Defendants, and how this prosecution fits into the government’s ‘all-tools’ approach to advancing its policies vis-a-vis China, may be put to one side for the moment: The Department of Justice has a special responsibility to treat with equal fairness those it charges with criminal offenses,” Huawei said in docket 1:18-cr-00457-AMD: “To date it has not done so.” The allegations are “tenuous,” Huawei said (in Pacer). “On the core fraud counts, it is rare that the government charges bank fraud while conceding (as it does in its extradition paperwork) that the defendants actually disclosed the key facts,” it said. “It is equally rare to bring wire fraud charges based on communications outside the United States, between foreign corporations, concerning operations outside the United States.”

Federal authorities in San Francisco charged a Santa Clara man with securities and wire fraud for allegedly bilking venture capital investors out of $17 million in bogus artificial intelligence funding. Shaukat Shamim, 49, wooed investors to his AI startup, Youplus, by allegedly lying about the number of clients who bought the software, said DOJ Monday. Prosecutors alleged Shamim showed investors a fake bank statement last summer showing the company had more than $600,000 in revenue from 35 clients, including Netflix, when it really had $65,000 from one client. Shamim is due next week at a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, said DOJ. Efforts to reach him or his attorneys Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Netflix believes Fortress Investment Group is bankrolling infringement litigation that “patent assertion entity” Uniloc 2017 filed against the streaming company, and wants the court to force Fortress to produce documents under subpoena to expose their conspiracy, said a motion to compel (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Uniloc sued Netflix in November 2018 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles alleging infringement of three patents for accessing internet video content. It was one of several identical complaints Uniloc filed against other streaming services, including Hulu and Roku. All countersued. Uniloc’s “sole activity is serially litigating patents against operating companies to grind them down and force settlements far beyond the intrinsic value of the asserted patents,” said Netflix in a memorandum supporting the motion. Uniloc itself “does not determine which patents to litigate,” it said. “Someone has performed a business analysis of the patents” and directed Uniloc which ones to buy and “litigate them against Netflix,” it said. “That someone is Fortress.” Netflix served subpoenas on Fortress June 17 for financial records, emails and other documents, and demanded it produce a witness to be deposed, it said. “Fortress responded with a flat refusal to produce a single document or a witness on any of the narrow topics Netflix specified.” Fortress didn’t comment.

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the Google v. Oracle intellectual property case (18-956) at 10 a.m. Oct. 7, the high court announced Monday (see 2004130019).

The National Retail Federation hailed Thursday’s Supreme Court decision blocking the Trump administration from disbanding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. “This is a landmark ruling that inherently recognizes that these young people are law-abiding, tax-paying Americans who have never known adult life anywhere else,” said CEO Matthew Shay. “It is still important for Congress to pass legislation permanently protecting these individuals so their future will never be in question again.” NRF was one of 143 trade associations and businesses to file a friend-of-the-court brief in October arguing that rescinding DACA would harm U.S. companies and the overall economy.

“Loot boxes” Apple offers as an in-game purchase through games downloaded from the App Store “have all the hallmarks of a Las Vegas-style slot machine, including the psychological aspects to encourage and create addiction,” alleged a complaint (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in San Jose. “Apple engages in predatory practices enticing consumers, including children, to engage in gambling and similar addictive conduct” in violation of California consumer protection and anti-gambling laws, said Huntington Beach resident Rebecca Taylor, seeking class-action status. Dozens of App Store games rely on such a "gambling mechanism to generate billions of dollars, much of it from kids,” it said. Loot boxes, bought with “real money,” are “randomized chances within the game to obtain important or better weapons, costumes” or other enhancements, it said. Taylor’s son plays App Store games that contain loot boxes, it said. Though downloadable for free, “to the extent he plays these games in the future, he will be subjected to Apple’s predatory Loot Box scheme,” it said. Apple didn't comment Monday.

Apple knowingly began selling MacBook Pros in 2016 with defective display cables, in violation of California’s unfair competition law and its Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act, alleged a complaint (in Pacer) Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose. Mahan Taleshpour paid just over $2,500 for a 15-inch MacBook Pro in April 2017, and the laptop’s display was its “main selling point,” said the complaint, seeking class-action status. To make the MacBook Pros “thinner and sleeker,” Apple used “thin flexible ribbon cables” to connect the display screen to the controller board inside the laptop, it said. The cables “function correctly” to start, but their placement “causes them to rub against the control board each time the laptop is opened or closed,” it said. The wear and tear eventually causes display artifacts, and ultimately renders the laptop “useless,” it said. The deterioration manifests itself over a prolonged period of time, well after the MacBook Pro’ one-year warranty expires, it said. Rectifying the defect requires replacing the entire display module, not just the worn-out cables, for many hundreds of dollars, it said. Apple didn’t comment Thursday.

Content companies alleging video piracy by IPTV service Nitro TV (see 2004060063) got a default judgment against named defendant Alejandro Galindo after he failed to plead or otherwise defend, said a clerk order (in Pacer, docket 20−cv−03129) entered Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.