The Supreme Court denied a Dish Network petition for writ of certiorari on Telephone Consumer Protection Act standing stemming from the $61 million TCPA judgment against the company (see 1905310003), said a docket 19-496 notice Monday.

Best Buy sells gift cards without Braille in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, alleged legally blind Bronx resident Marcos Calcano in a complaint (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that seeks class-action status. Court records show it was the latest of four dozen near-identical ADA complaints Calcano and his New York lawyers, Jeffrey and Dana Gottlieb, filed in the Manhattan and Brooklyn federal courts since mid-October, including against Domino's Pizza, Nordstrom, Sephora and TGI Friday's. Calcano contacted Best Buy Dec. 9 asking if it sold Braille gift cards, and when told it didn't, filed the complaint four days later, said court records. “Quite surprisingly, upon information and belief, there is only one gift card on the market that contains Braille and it is issued by Starbucks,” said the complaint. The Gottliebs didn't respond Monday to emails seeking comment. Best Buy spokesperson Jeff Shelman declined comment.

Qualcomm has monopoly power in two key chip markets, maintained by refusing licenses to rival chipmakers, the FTC argued to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (see 1910100017). Oral argument is set for 9:30 a.m. Feb. 13 in San Francisco. Qualcomm and DOJ said previously that the lawsuit and lower court’s injunction threaten national security, given Qualcomm’s role in leading 5G advancement against Chinese rivals. The FTC called those claims “purely speculative.” Intel supported the commission in the case, also announcing it agrees with the district court’s finding “Qualcomm’s licensing practices have strangled competition in the CDMA and premium LTE modem chip markets for years, and harmed rivals, OEMs and end consumers.” Intel claims it “suffered the brunt of Qualcomm’s anticompetitive behavior, was denied opportunities in the modem market, was prevented from making sales to customers and was forced to sell at prices artificially skewed by Qualcomm.” Ericsson and Samsung previously argued in favor of Qualcomm, with Samsung saying contract and patent law are “better suited” for settling disputes about fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms. American, Japanese and German automaker groups said prices of cars with 5G will likely increase if Qualcomm wins. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Denso with Continental Automotive Systems filed briefs. “Automakers have been forced into unnecessary and inefficient [standard-essential patent] licensing negotiations ... even though chip sales that exhaust patent rights ... would negate the need for such negotiations while allowing the patentee to be compensated for its inventions based on the price charged for a chip,” the alliance argued. That will worsen if Qualcomm practices are ratified, it said. The Computer & Communications Industry Association supports the agency, saying Qualcomm has an “antitrust duty” to license competing chip manufacturers on FRAND terms. Open Markets also supported the FTC, saying in a release that Qualcomm practices compel “smartphone and tablet producers to pay exorbitantly high amounts for their chips.” The company didn’t comment Monday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals scheduled Feb. 10 oral argument on challenges of FCC wireless infrastructure orders (see 1912020018).

The Supreme Court agreed to hear Google’s appeal of a ruling that it illegally copied Oracle’s programming code in Android (see 1903280061, docket 18-956). Oracle sued Google in 2010, claiming Google violated copyright law by using about 11,000 lines of Java programming code. Google claimed fair use. Oracle, which won a federal appeals court decision in 2018, is seeking some $9 billion in damages. Oracle is confident the high court “will preserve long established copyright protections for original software and reject Google’s continuing efforts to avoid responsibility for copying Oracle’s innovations,” a spokesperson emailed Friday. “We believe the Court will reject any reasoning that permits copying verbatim vast amounts of software code, used for the same purpose and same way as the original.” Google hopes the high court “reaffirms the importance of software interoperability in American competitiveness,” wrote Senior Vice President-Global Affairs Kent Walker. “Developers should be able to create applications across platforms and not be locked into one company's software.”

Retailer B&H Foto & Electronics owes New York State at least $7.3 million in unpaid sales taxes on the more than $67 million it collected in instant-rebate vendor reimbursements since 2006, alleged New York Attorney General Letitia James in a complaint Thursday in State Supreme Court in Lower Manhattan. B&H is “the largest non-chain photo and video equipment retailer” in the U.S., with 2018 sales exceeding $3 billion, said James. Its Ninth Avenue Manhattan store “sells cameras and other electronics to shoppers from around the globe,” she said. The vendor reimbursements B&H took in were “taxable receipts” under state tax law, but the retailer hid the reimbursements from state auditors, and continued doing so through the first three quarters of 2019, she said. B&H failed to declare the reimbursements it collected and accounted for them "as reductions in cost of goods sold,” she said. "This approach minimized the possibility that a Tax Department audit would detect the omission of such reimbursements from B&H’s taxable receipts.” The complaint seeks recovery of the unpaid taxes, plus triple damages for violations of New York’s False Claims Act. B&H thinks the attorney general is "flat wrong," and trying to "create a tax on discounts in order to make New Yorkers pay more," emailed spokesperson Jeff Gerstel. "B&H is not a big box store or a faceless chain," he said. "We are a New York institution, having operated here for nearly 50 years with a stellar reputation." The retailer "has done nothing wrong," said Gerstel. "It is outrageous that the AG has decided to attack a New York company that employs thousands of New Yorkers while leaving the national online and retail behemoths unchallenged."

Corellium, the mobile-developer startup that Apple sued Aug. 15 in “a straightforward case of infringement” of the iOS operating system (see 1908160004), filed a counterclaim accusing Apple of stiffing it on $300,000 in “rewards” it owes the company for participating in the iOS “bug bounty program.” As part of its “discovery” in the lawsuit, which was inexplicably terminated Aug. 16 before being reinstated, “Apple is requesting that Corellium disclose any and all bugs it is aware of for free,” said the heavily redacted counterclaim (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, Florida, accusing Apple of unjust enrichment. “Through this lawsuit, Apple continues its practice of obtaining and retaining the benefit of Corellium’s technology while refusing to pay for that benefit.” Corellium co-founder Chris Wade joined the “invitation-only” bug bounty program in April 2017 and reported seven iOS flaws to Apple in the past two years for which he and the company weren’t paid, said the counterclaim. Apple used to pay $200,000 per bug to participants in the program but upped the reward to $1 million Aug. 8, a week before filing suit against Corellium, it said. Apple’s complaint is an effort to “stifle innovation and the freedom of mobile developers,“ emailed Corellium CEO Amanda Gorton Thursday. “This comes as a surprise to our team, given our long-standing relationship with Apple,” she said. “We think Apple’s lawsuit is driven by its own business interests rather than a genuine belief that we violated any of its rights.” Apple didn’t comment.

Nanosys moved for dismissal of a complaint accusing it of producing quantum-dot materials in California using processes that infringe U.S. patent 7,105,051, said a brief (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware. The University of Arkansas owns the 13-year-old paten, but gave QD technology developer NNCrystal an exclusive license to the invention, including the right to sue for infringement (see 1909140001). The school and NNCrystal gave no “plausible factual basis to support their infringement allegations,” said Nanosys Monday. Their “willful infringement” allegations also were “inadequately pled” because they gave “no specific facts to support their contentions,” it said. “Their willful infringement allegation amounts to a single sentence reciting the legal conclusion of willfulness.” The plaintiffs’ lawyers didn’t comment Tuesday.

Lutron dismissed a patent infringement complaint filed in August against Savant in the U.S. District Court in Delaware claiming patent infringement of a four-button keypad used to control drapes and lights. The companies reached a settlement Friday, working “collaboratively to settle the lawsuit in the interest of their mutual customers and look forward to continuing their long-standing integration alliance and relationship,” Lutron said.

Advertisers urged the Supreme Court to take up CTIA’s challenge of an RF disclosure law by Berkeley, California (see 1910030056). By upholding the law that requires the wireless industry warn about possible dangers of overexposure to wireless frequencies, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals “disregarded bedrock First Amendment requirements,” the Association of National Advertisers wrote in an amicus brief Thursday in case No. 19-439. The appeals court contradicted the Supreme Court’s “growing recognition of greater protection of commercial speech and improperly assumes all compelled commercial disclosures necessarily receive the most relaxed level of constitutional scrutiny,” ANA said. It "permits compelled commercial speech as a remedy to serve any governmental interest so long as it is ‘more than trivial,’ and supports any disclosure that is arguably factual, regardless of the overall impression created.” The 9th Circuit denied First Amendment protections to the wireless industry, agreed the Pacific Legal Foundation in a Wednesday brief: That decision “promotes both over-warning and senseless mandatory labeling that ultimately harm consumers and the public interest.”

Music labels' claims that Charter Communications profited from direct copyright infringement by its internet subscribers and didn't stop or limit the infringing activity are plausible, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Hegarty of Denver said in a docket 19-cv-00874 recommendation Monday (in Pacer), responding to a Charter motion to dismiss the vicarious music piracy complaint (see 1905290002). Hegarty recommended against dismissal. Charter outside counsel didn't comment Tuesday.