A hearing is set for Aug. 3 in Google’s app store monopoly case, said the U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco Wednesday in docket 3:21-md-02981 (see 2303290001). Judge James Donato signed off on a 10 a.m. hearing on the parties' summary judgment and Daubert motions. A concurrent expert proceeding for merits experts is set for 10 a.m. Aug. 1.

The U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan scheduled a dial-in pre-motion teleconference for May 31 at 12:15 p.m. EDT on Nexstar’s forthcoming motion to dismiss DirecTV’s antitrust complaint, said a text-only docket entry Monday (docket 1:23-cv-02221). DirecTV’s litigation accusing Nexstar and its broadcast sidecars Mission and White Knight of colluding to set retransmission consent fee prices (see 2303150041) should be dismissed for multiple reasons, Nexstar wrote U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty in a letter Friday requesting the pre-motion conference (see 2305210001). DirecTV alleges the broadcasters' “unlawful price-fixing conspiracy” is the root cause of unsuccessful retrans talks with Mission and White Knight resulting in blackouts.

Google, for nearly 15 years, “deployed a web of unlawful anticompetitive practices to monopolize the markets for Android app distribution and in-app payment solutions,” said the plaintiffs in the consolidated Google Play Store litigation in their opposition Friday (docket 3:21-cv-05227) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco to Google’s April 20 motion for partial summary judgment. The conduct included “exclusivity and preferred payment arrangements” with OEMs and payments to wireless carriers “to disincentivize them from launching or supporting competing app stores,” it said. The company ensured Google Play “is the only viable way to distribute apps on Android, it said. Through its unlawful “tie,” Google forced consumers and developers to use Google Play Billing for all in-app sales and purchases of digital content in those apps, it said. The plaintiffs “will prove all that at trial,” it said. Google now attempts to prevent the jury “from learning the full scope and history of its scheme” under the guise of a targeted motion, it said. But a complex antitrust case seldom contains a pure issue of law with no genuine dispute of fact, and this case “is no exception,” it said. Google’s motion “rests on disputed facts and incorrect statements of law,” it said: “All five of its arguments for summary judgment fail.”

The April 27 decision at the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit that attorneys general in New York and more than 45 states waited too long to bring an antitrust lawsuit against Meta for alleged anticompetitive conduct in its Instagram and WhatsApp buys (see 2304270038) is “pertinent supplemental authority on a crucial issue” to the defense in which seven consumer plaintiffs seek to vacate T-Mobile’s 2020 Sprint buy on antitrust grounds (see 2212060052). So said Tuesday’s response (docket 1:22-cv-03189) from defendants T-Mobile and SoftBank in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. The D.C. Circuit decision confirms that laches bars the plaintiffs’ claim for injunctive relief, they said. On Meta’s successful undue delay claim, the D.C. Circuit didn’t view the four-year antitrust statute of limitations as “controlling,” as the plaintiffs against T-Mobile and SoftBank assert, said the response. As for Meta’s prejudice defense, the D.C. Circuit likewise agreed with T-Mobile and SoftBank that the severe consequences attending divestiture after a completed merger result in prejudice to the defendant, it said. The D.C. Circuit pointed specifically to the harm arising from breaking up a combined entity, it said. The plaintiffs’ contention that T-Mobile and SoftBank wouldn’t be similarly harmed if T-Mobile’s Sprint buy is vacated “is belied by their own allegations that Sprint’s operations have been integrated with T-Mobile’s since day one,” it said.

Apple’s recent victory before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could renew efforts to regulate dominant app store owners (see 2304250055), but Congress shouldn’t rush legislation without fully understanding the consumer implications, said Jeffrey Westling, American Action Forum director-technology and innovation, Wednesday. Some lawmakers cited Apple’s App Store “exclusivity and fees as examples of anticompetitive practices that should be outlawed regardless of any pro-consumer benefits,” said Westling. He noted calls for passage of the Open App Markets Act after the 9th Circuit decision. Congress “would benefit from more data about the relative costs and benefits of such reforms, which it could glean from Europe’s own recently enacted legislation to regulate practices it deems anticompetitive,” he said.

There’s no need to compel Google to produce documents “that it has already agreed to produce,” Wilson Sonsini counsel for Google wrote U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel for Southern New York in Manhattan in a letter response Wednesday (docket 1:21-md-03010). The plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation challenging Google’s alleged anticompetitive hold on the digital ad tech market wrote the judge April 21 seeking to compel Google to produce 800,000 documents it produced for DOJ’s digital ad tech investigation but has withheld from the MDL plaintiffs (see 2304240002). There’s also no need for the court “to accelerate the timeline on which Google will produce these documents, as Google anticipates producing them before the deadline for substantial completion of document productions,” Wilson Sonsini attorney Justina Sessions told the judge. “Google is working diligently to produce these and other documents,” she said. The documents at issue are responsive to some of the 301 production requests that the MDL plaintiffs “served on the last day they were permitted to do so,” she said. By the time the plaintiffs filed their pre-motion letter seeking production of these documents without delay, “they knew that Google had sent the documents to a vendor for processing and that Google would then promptly produce them before the substantial completion deadline,” said Sessions. The plaintiffs “appear to take issue with the amount of time that it takes to process the documents for production,” she said. “Preparing these approximately 800,000 documents for production takes processing and quality-control-checking time,” she said. “However, this process is already underway by Google’s document vendor. Google will produce the documents at issue promptly once they are prepared.”

Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg for the District of Columbia signed a memorandum opinion Wednesday (docket 1:20-cv-03590) granting “only in part” the FTC’s motion to compel Meta to produce “further supplemental answers” to 14 agency interrogatories and their subsections. The FTC’s antitrust case alleges Meta unlawfully maintained a monopoly over the market for personal social network services by acquiring competitors and potential competitors, specifically Instagram and WhatsApp. At issue in the motion to compel is the additional information that the FTC seeks into Meta’s assertions that the Instagram and WhatsApp buys resulted in procompetitive benefits. The procompetitive-benefits argument is “the centerpiece of Meta’s affirmative defense to the FTC’s claims,” said Boasberg’s memorandum opinion. But with the May 22 “merits-discovery” deadline “quickly approaching,” the FTC “has been limited throughout the discovery period” by knowing only examples of Meta’s procompetitive-benefits defense, it said. Though Meta intends to call expert witnesses to testify about the procompetitive benefits of its acquisitions, that doesn’t alter its Rule 33 obligation “to provide complete interrogatory responses to questions asking it to state its contentions or to provide facts on which they are based,” it said. It may be that a party’s experts will rely on facts to support the party’s contentions, but it’s not “a valid objection to claim that interrogatories asking about facts and contentions” constitute premature expert discovery, it said. In a “spoiler alert” prelude to Boasberg's point-by-point analysis of the interrogatories and Meta’s responses to them, “each side wins some and loses some,” said his memorandum opinion. Meta’s response to Interrogatory No. 10, for example, provides only a high-level summary and examples of the procompetitive benefits of the acquisitions, it said: “That is not enough.” If providing a complete list of the benefits is impossible, the judge ordered Meta to “certify that its response is full and complete to the best of its knowledge and belief,” it said. The judge, on the other hand, denied the FTC’s request for a complete Meta response to Interrogatory No. 11, seeking to probe Meta’s claims about the benefits that its Integrity program yielded. The interrogatory, “read literally, seeks stunning detail and warranted Meta’s initial refusal to answer it in accordance with its express terms,” said the judge.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin for Northern Illinois in Chicago set oral argument for July 20 at 2 p.m. CDT on the motions from defendants T-Mobile and SoftBank to dismiss the class action to vacate T-Mobile’s 2020 Sprint buy, said a clerk’s entry Friday (docket 1:22-cv-03189). The seven consumer plaintiffs in the class action, all customers of AT&T or Verizon, allege the anticompetitive nature of the T-Mobile/Sprint combination in 2020 caused their own wireless rates to soar (see 2212060052).

The plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation challenging Google’s alleged anticompetitive hold on the digital ad tech market want to compel Google to produce 800,000 documents it produced for DOJ’s digital ad tech investigation but has withheld from the MDL plaintiffs, they wrote U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel for Southern New York in a letter Friday (docket 1:21-md-03010). Google hasn’t explained why it would take four to six weeks to produce documents it has already produced to other parties in related litigation, said the letter. “Google’s continued withholding of the DOJ documents is unjustified and is delaying efficient progress” in the MDL, it said. Producing the 800,000 documents involves “only minimal burden for Google,” it said. “The documents have already been reviewed by Google and prepared for production. Google can just push a button.” Producing the documents “would significantly aid the progress of document discovery” in the MDL, it said.

Arizona joined the DOJ and 16 states "to fight for fair competition in digital advertising” in the bipartisan antitrust case against Google, said Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) in a Wednesday news release. Plaintiffs, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia, allege Google monopolizes digital advertising technologies that connect website publishers looking to sell advertising space with advertisers trying to reach customers. The lawsuit (docket 1:23-cv-00108) asserts Google violated the Sherman Antitrust Act’s prohibitions against monopolization after its acquisition of DoubleClick, which controlled 60% of online advertising when it bought it in 2008 (see 2304180007).