Qualcomm praised a U.S. trade judge’s decision Tuesday that certain iPhones violated one of its patents, but disputed another, said General Counsel Don Rosenberg. International Trade Commission Administrative Law Judge MaryJoan McNamara made an initial determination that Apple violated Section 337 of the Tariff Act in importing “certain mobile electronic devices containing processing components” and will recommend limited exclusion and cease and desist orders against Apple. Final determination is expected by July 26. “We are pleased that today ITC Judge McNamara found that Apple-designed processors infringe our ‘674 patent and will be recommending an import ban and cease and desist order to the Commission,” said Rosenberg. “The innovations we contribute to the iPhone extend well beyond a single component and Judge McNamara’s decision, along with recent infringement rulings in other U.S. and foreign courts, affirm the value of our technologies.” The patent, No. 8,063,674, improves power management in processor circuitry to reduce power consumption and improve battery life in mobile devices, said Rosenberg. Qualcomm accused circuitry in the Apple-designed A10, A11 and A12 application processors used widely in Apple devices, including in iPhones from the 7 through the most recently released models, he said. Also Tuesday, the ITC issued a determination not to review infringement complaints for six other Qualcomm patents. That's "inconsistent with the recent unanimous jury verdict finding infringement of the same patent after Apple abandoned its invalidity defense at the end of trial,” said Rosenberg. Qualcomm will seek reconsideration. Rosenberg said courts in China and Germany recently ruled that Apple infringed other Qualcomm nonstandard essential patents and issued injunctions on infringing devices. Apple didn’t comment Wednesday.

Charter Communications, through "willful and extensive" contribution to music piracy by thousands of broadband subscribers, did nothing to curb that copyright infringement but "prioritize[d] its own profits over its legal obligations," said music labels and publishers in a civil complaint Friday (in Pacer, docket 19-cv-874) filed in U.S. District Court in Denver. They said Charter "routinely thumbed its nose" at the labels by continuing to provide service to subscribers it knew to be serially infringing copyright. The suit lists several IP addresses allegedly of Charter subscribers who have been subject of dozens of infringement notices. Among those suing are Warner Brothers, Atlantic, Sony Music and Capitol Records. They allege violations of the Copyright Act and seek unspecified statutory damages. Charter told us Monday it will “defend against these baseless accusations.” Some of the same labels also are suing cable ISP Grande Communications (see 1802080001) and Cox Communications (see 1808020009).

DOJ’s Antitrust Division doesn’t “pick winners and losers,” but enforces the laws “equally to protect a level playing field,” Chief Makan Delrahim told the National Diversity Coalition Thursday. “Hard-nose competition ensures lower prices, increased innovation, higher quality goods and services, and improved opportunities for entrepreneurs,” said Delrahim. “When we see a large company try to buy its biggest competitor so that consumers can no longer compare the merits of one against the merits of another, we bring a lawsuit to block that.” If competitors collude to fix prices, “we bring a lawsuit to stop that anticompetitive conduct, and we bring criminal charges when the conspiracy warrants it,” he said. “If a company has succeeded to the point that it does not have much competition, we will bring a lawsuit if the company uses the advantages of its position to get in the way of companies that would otherwise be able to win customers on the merits and challenge the dominant player’s market position.”

Pointing to no material facts in question and all the law going against VidAngel, U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte of Los Angeles Wednesday granted movie studios' summary judgment motion against the streaming service. In a docket 16-cv-04109 order (in Pacer), Birotte said VidAngel hasn't raised any triable issue of material fact or about its "last-ditch argument" that its service might be social criticism. He said VidAngel can't avoid copyright and Digital Millennium Copyright Act legal questions that the District Court and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals resolved in previously granting the studios preliminary injunction (see 1708240017). VidAngel outside counsel didn't comment Thursday.

Millions of iPhone and MacBook owners “continue to suffer harm” through Apple’s “coercive policies” of requiring “two-factor authentication” cybersecurity protections on their devices, alleged a complaint (in Pacer) seeking class-action status. Once 2FA is enabled on a device either by default or during a software update, Apple requires owners to access their accounts through a laborious “extraneous logging in procedure” that locks them out of their devices after 14 days if they don’t comply, said the complaint Friday in U.S. District Court in San Jose. Apple “does not get user consent” to enable 2FA, a feature that interferes with consumers’ everyday use of their personal devices, in violation of the 1984 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and other statutes, it said. “When a consumer purchases an Apple device, the purchased Apple device becomes the personal property of the consumer. Apple no longer has any ownership or property rights to the Apple devices after sale.” Yet when the company enables 2FA on “owned devices,” it makes them “inaccessible for intermittent periods of time,” said the complaint. It seeks money damages and an order barring Apple from enabling 2FA without customers’ permission. The tech provider didn’t comment Monday.

The deadline for filing a claim in Vizio’s $17 million class-action settlement (see 1810050040) is April 29, said a Friday letter from the plaintiffs’ lawyers Cotchett Pitre. Consumers who bought a Vizio smart TV and connected it to the internet Feb. 1, 2014-Feb. 6, 2017, can file a claim as part of the settlement for the case, which alleges Vizio violated privacy laws and consumer-protection laws by collecting sensitive information about what was displayed on certain Vizio TVs and selling the data to advertisers “without sufficient disclosures.” Estimated compensation is $13 to $31 per TV, depending on the number of eligible claims submitted, they said. Vizio denied the allegations. The settlement hearing date is May 29. The company will delete all viewing data it collected during the class period, said the settlement notice.

Amazon “discarded” director Woody Allen and his Gravier Productions, reneging on a multimillion-dollar deal to produce and distribute four Allen films after allegations resurfaced at the start of the #MeToo movement that he sexually abused adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow in 1992. So complained (in Pacer) Allen and Gravier Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Allen denies the sexual-abuse allegations and said Amazon hired him to “develop its nascent entertainment studio,” promising him “minimum guaranteed payments” of $68 million-$73 million, plus a box office cut and other perks. Allen wrapped the first film, A Rainy Day in New York, in 2017 and delivered it for theatrical release this year, but the movie remains shelved indefinitely, it said. After Amazon Studios and Amazon Content Services used Allen to “promote and build Amazon Studios’ standing as a full-fledged film studio," they unilaterally terminated the contract without legal grounds and “refused to honor their commitments,” it said. Amazon didn’t comment.

Restricting law enforcement from compelling suspects to unlock smartphones would create a “zone of lawlessness," Utah, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania told the Indiana Supreme Court in an amicus brief posted Monday in Katelin Seo v. Indiana (18S-CR-00595). It's "increasingly rare to have a case that does not include digital evidence,” and digital keys are nearly impossible to crack with brute force, the eight states said. Prohibiting law enforcement from compelling password entry “drastically alters the balance of power between investigators and criminals and renders law enforcement often incapable of lawfully accessing relevant evidence,” they said. Amici ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued the Fifth Amendment protects suspects from incriminating themselves via compelled password entry. The states cited an exception: If the compelled act doesn't give the government additional information, the result is a “foregone conclusion” not protected by the amendment, they said. “Entering a password communicates only a single thing: that the person knows the password.” Law enforcement doesn’t need to know the device’s contents, which would be an impossible burden, they said. The ACLU and EFF rejected the foregone-conclusion rationale, saying it has been used only in the context of producing specific, tangible business and financial records. And even so, a state "would have to show with reasonable particularity that it has independent knowledge of any and all information disclosed by the compelled act of production -- including that the phone belongs to the witness and also that the specific, identifiable files it seeks are stored” there, the groups said: Merely showing the person knows the password isn’t enough.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center sued Customs and Border Protection Friday for audit records on electronic device border searches. The lawsuit follows EPIC’s Freedom of Information Act request, filed about two months ago, seeking records to determine the legality of border searches of cellphones, tablets and laptops. The group cited a January 2018 CBP directive requiring agency audits of border searches. CBP failed to make a timely decision on the FOIA request, said the suit in U.S. District Court in Washington. The agency didn’t comment.

The FTC hasn’t “come close to meeting its burden” in proving Qualcomm has a mobile chip monopoly (see 1811060021), the company said Wednesday, the day after closing argument in California federal court. “Real-world” evidence offered at trial shows how the chipmaker's “years of R&D and innovation fostered competition, and growth for the entire mobile economy,” benefiting consumers worldwide, said Qualcomm General Counsel Don Rosenberg. The FTC, with Apple and Intel support, in mid-January argued Qualcomm blocked competitors from entering the market by charging exorbitant royalty rates, resulting in higher phone prices for consumers. The agency didn’t comment Wednesday.