Cyber intelligence company NSO Group and Q Cyber Technologies should have known their clients “routinely utilized relational targeting” that has been “incredibly effective at accomplishing the goals of authoritarian regimes,” alleges Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, widow of assassinated journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in a complaint Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-00779) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia in Alexandria.

Two weeks before California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) enforcement, the California Chamber of Commerce (CalChamber) pressed a state court to grant its March 30 petition to delay the date until one year after the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) adopts final rules. “The sole reason for the near nine-month delay in issuing final regulations is the Agency’s conduct,” CalChamber wrote Thursday at California Superior Court in Sacramento (case 2023-80004106-CV).

Charter Communications seeks a temporary and preliminary injunction to prevent defendant Bobbie Gilbert, its former director-state government affairs, from continuing to violate her noncompete agreement and misappropriate Charter’s trade secrets, said Charter’s complaint Thursday (docket 6:23-cv-02717) in U.S. District Court for South Carolina in Greenville.

Using a “fraudulent marketing scheme,” First American Home Warranty leads consumers to believe they have been overcharged on their utility bill and it will give them a rebate for the overcharges, alleges a Wednesday Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) lawsuit (docket 2:23-cv-11412) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Michigan in Detroit.

Requiring Grande Communications Networks to post a bond pending its appeal of a copyright infringement lawsuit is a “punitive measure that would serve only to enrich the company that issues the bond,” said its reply (docket 1:17-cv-00365) Wednesday in support of its motion to stay executive of judgment and for a bond waiver in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in Austin.

U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley for Northern California in San Francisco is expanding the court’s two-day evidentiary hearing to portions of five days on the FTC’s motion for a preliminary injunction to block Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard buy (see 2306140025), said her signed order Wednesday (docket 3:23-cv-02880). Microsoft and Activision, in a motion Wednesday for an expedited case management conference, warned that a two-day hearing is “not enough time to present the issues in this case.”

The lawyer for three Twitter user appellants who allege senior Health and Human Services officials coerced the platform into suspending their accounts and censoring their content for spreading COVID-19 misinformation in their tweets faced tough questions from a 6th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court panel in oral argument Thursday to explain why their claims against the government don’t fail under the chronology test. The appellants in Changizi v. HHS (docket 22-3573) are seeking to reverse the district court’s dismissal of their complaint for lack of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim, arguing the lower court erroneously concluded the plaintiffs lacked standing because they suffered no concrete harm.

The FTC and Florida don’t adequately allege any required element of their claims but “merely recite elements and allege conclusory allegations,” said Chargebacks911 in a motion to dismiss (docket 8:23-cv-00796) with prejudice a fraud complaint in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa. Failure to plead any of the elements “is grounds for dismissal,” it said.

The district court correctly decided there was no “genuine dispute of material fact” that Simply Wireless had abandoned any rights it may have had to the Simply Prepaid trademark, said T-Mobile’s answering brief Tuesday (docket 22-2236) in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Appellant Simply Wireless wants the 4th Circuit to set aside the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia’s grant of summary judgment for T-Mobile on grounds that it paused use of Simply Prepaid for legitimate business reasons (see 2303170025).

Verizon Wireless sued Rankin County, Mississippi, to require the county to approve construction of a wireless telecommunications tower to “fill a significant gap in wireless coverage and capacity,” said a Wednesday complaint (docket 3:23-cv-00381) in U.S. District Court for Southern Mississippi in Northern Jackson.