Roku TV functionality to send photos from smartphones to TVs violates three U.S. patents assigned to Ortiz & Associates Consulting, alleged a complaint (in Pacer) filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware. The three patents, granted March 2015-January 2017, describe methods for wirelessly “rendering” content on a TV from a handheld smart device, said the complaint. Before the patents, inventor Luis Ortiz “recognized that wireless device users were generally restricted in all data use by small device-based viewers,” through their limited graphic-user-interface functionality or “inconveniently located rendering resources,” it said. Thursday, Roku didn’t comment. Ortiz filed similar complaints Feb. 1 against Google and HP in U.S. District Court in Chicago, records show. Google and Ortiz settled June 7, while HP successfully moved July 2 to transfer the case to U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

California's McGill rule impedes or precludes bilateral arbitration, and thus conflicts with federal law and is pre-empted by the Federal Arbitration Act, appellant Comcast said in a docket 18-15288 reply brief (in Pacer) Wednesday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Comcast is appealing lower court denial of its motion to compel arbitration of subscriber claims it fails to properly disclose the true pricing of cable packages (see 1808030047). It said the McGill rule -- which voids contracts that deny consumers their non-waivable rights to pursue claims for public injunctive relief -- makes unenforceable individual contract provisions but doesn't provide grounds to revoke a contract. It said McGill doesn't apply in this case since the subscribers had an opportunity to opt out of arbitration and chose not to. Appellee counsel didn't comment.

Allowing a class-action antitrust lawsuit to proceed against Apple, alleging it monopolized distribution of App Store applications, would harm competition, the Computer & Communications Industry Association argued in a Supreme Court filing Friday. Others, including the government, concurred. The high court agreed (see 1806180053) to hear Apple's appeal of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the suit could proceed. Upholding the ruling would weaken competition for “potential new entrants and for thousands of smaller businesses that rely on so-called multi-sided online business models,” CCIA said. CEO Ed Black said the lower court erred “in understanding how these business models function and ignored well-settled antitrust doctrines to come up with a ruling that would unfortunately expose these matchmakers to duplicative treble damages.” The solicitor general and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also argued in favor of Apple. Because app developers can seek recovery of damages that have been passed on to consumers, allowing the consumers to sue would “create an evident prospect of duplicative recovery,” the solicitor general said. Online platforms lower overhead costs that simplify market entry, ACT|The App Association wrote. Platforms also give app developers instant access to international markets and strengthen intellectual property protections for developers, the association said.

The Supreme Court exempted policies like the RF disclosure law in Berkeley when it rejected a California disclosure law in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, the city argued Thursday in a brief (in Pacer) at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. CTIA, which sued the city and claims the NIFLA decision affirmed its view the First Amendment doesn’t allow government to compel businesses to speak (see 1807260051), asked (in Pacer) the court Friday if it may file a "succinct reply" of 10 pages to the city's arguments by Sept. 6. Berkeley said the Supreme Court ruling didn’t conflict with the 9th Circuit upholding the city’s law, but rather “strengthens” the appeals court’s decision: "While deciding to apply a heightened level of scrutiny to disclosures in the uniquely contested context of abortion counseling, the Court distinguished that case from cases involving either 'health and safety warnings' or 'purely factual and uncontroversial disclosures about commercial products.'" The Berkeley law meets both standards, the city said.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam of Oakland, California, rejected some FTC false advertising claims against DirecTV that are the basis of the agency's $3.95 billion lawsuit against the satellite company. The docket 15-cv-01129-HSG order (in Pacer) Thursday responded to an oral motion by DirecTV during an August 2017 bench trial for judgment on partial findings. The judge said the trade commission didn't prove DirecTV violated Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, barring misleading of consumers, in its non-website ads since it didn't show they were likely to mislead a reasonable consumer. Gilliam said while the case regarding web-based advertising "was far from overwhelming," he would defer a determination on those claims until after the close of the evidence. The commission didn't comment. DirecTV owner AT&T emailed it's "pleased with the Court’s decision and look[ed] forward to resolving what remains of the case."

BMG won't be barred from referring to copyright infringement as stealing, theft or some similar term when issues remanded to U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, are retried, Judge Liam O'Grady said in a docket 14-cv-01611-LO-JFA order (in Pacer) Tuesday. The judge said such a bar, as requested by Cox (see here, in Pacer), wouldn't be appropriate since such language is "not unduly prejudicial" to the company. The ISP argued such argumentative statements "risk confusing the jury" and asked that BMG counsel be ordered to use instead such language as "alleged infringement of BMG's Copyright rights." The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in February reaffirmed the lower court's denial of a safe harbor defense for Cox in BMG's copyright infringement complaint and remanded the case for a new trial because of jury instruction errors (see 1802010026). That is scheduled to begin Aug. 28.

An Arkansas law firm filed a class-action antitrust lawsuit in Maryland federal court against Sinclair and Tribune accusing them of colluding to fix advertising prices, connecting the accusation to reports DOJ is investigating the companies over advertising sales amid the FCC designating Sinclair/Tribune for hearing. “This antitrust class action arises from a conspiracy among Defendants and their coconspirators to fix prices for commercials to be aired on broadcast television stations,” said the complaint (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in Maryland by the Law Offices of Peter Miller, a Sinclair advertiser. The broadcasters conspired to artificially inflate ad prices in response to insufficiently increasing revenue, the complaint said. Sinclair and Tribune had “numerous opportunities to conspire” as members of associations like NAB and were negotiating a deal to combine, the complaint said. An NAB spokesman said it's "laughable" to suggest that the association had any involvement in price-fixing. The companies colluded “by having members of their advertising sales teams share competitively sensitive information and data with each other, which they used to raise advertising prices to levels higher than they otherwise would have been,” the complaint said. The lawsuit is on behalf of all direct purchasers of advertising from them in the U.S. The plaintiff, Sinclair, Tribune and DOJ didn’t comment.

The merits of DOJ's appeal arguing a district judge rejected fundamental economic principles in approving AT&T buying Time Warner (see 1807180064) are tough to see, blogged American Enterprise Institute Adjunct Scholar Bronwyn Howell Wednesday. She said the economic models DOJ relied on have value only when they mirror the real world, but U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found them based on implausible assumptions. She said the video distribution market, aswarm with aggregators and content providers, is very different from the traditional reseller market Justice relied on and "does not lend itself to a single one-size-fits-all bargaining approach." No matter how "beautiful" or partially correct it is, it won't help if circumstances the model reflects aren't prevailing ones, Howell wrote.

A “wide range” of Apple products, including the iPhone X, uses a lead-free solder alloy in violation of a January 2001 patent (6,176,947), alleged the patent’s owner, Singapore Asahi Chemical & Solder Industries, in a complaint (in Pacer) filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Cleveland. Asahi, a global manufacturer and distributor of solder products and related chemicals, bought the patents in March 2002 from two Cleveland-area inventors, said the complaint. The inventors recognized that “traditional” lead-tin solder alloys faced a “limited future,” so they devised alloys “to meet the increasing level of performance needed in solder joints as required by the continued advancements in integrated circuit and IC package technologies,” said the complaint. It’s those lead-free alloys that are incorporated into Apple products without an Asahi license, it said. Asahi gave Apple written notice of the alleged infringement “at least as early” as July 2017, it said. “Despite such previous written notice, Apple continues to infringe Asahi’s patent rights.” Apple didn’t comment Thursday.

DOJ appealed a federal judge's ruling that rejected its antitrust complaint and cleared AT&T to take over Time Warner. DOJ filed a brief notice with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Thursday in USA v. AT&T (No. 1:17-cv-02511-RJL) that it's appealing the June 12 final judgment entered by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon (see 1806120002 and 1806120060). The department sued the companies in November to block the deal, alleging the combined company would be too big an anti-competitive risk to rival video distributors. AT&T General Counsel David McAtee said in a statement: “The Court’s decision could hardly have been more thorough, fact-based, and well-reasoned. While the losing party in litigation always has the right to appeal if it wishes, we are surprised that the DOJ has chosen to do so under these circumstances. We are ready to defend the Court’s decision at the D.C. Circuit.” AT&T/TW "is a bad deal for consumers and competition," said John Bergmayer, Public Knowledge senior counsel. "Since it has gone forward, AT&T has already raised prices for its DirecTV Now video service, more than doubled the mysterious ‘administrative fee’ it tacks on to most of its wireless bills, and raised the price of some of its wireless plans while removing the HBO subscription that it had previously included. Judge Leon’s decision contained numerous errors, and we believe the DOJ’s position should be vindicated.”