Microsoft’s March 4 motion to dismiss is wrong to compare the New York Times’ copyright infringement complaint against the generative AI products of Microsoft and OpenAI with Hollywood’s “alarmism” over the Sony Betamax VCR (see 2403050038), said the Times’ memorandum of law Tuesday (docket 1:23-cv-11195) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan in opposition to that motion.
Sephora ran a telemarketing campaign that promote its products and services by repeatedly sending text messages or making phone calls to numbers whose recipients asked to be added to Sephora’s internal do not call registry, “a plain violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act,” alleged plaintiff Megan Kelly’s class action Friday (docket 4:24-cv-01648) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland. Kelly originally consented to receive Sephora’s marketing text messages, but on Jan. 24, she grew tired “of the sheer number" of them daily, so she replied “STOP” to opt out of receiving future texts, said the complaint. Sephora immediately responded that Kelly was “unsubscribed,” but she nevertheless received at least 22 more text messages after her opt-out request urging her to opt back in, it said. “Not only was the number of text messages unreasonable, the times at which she received them was also unreasonable,” said the complaint. On Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 alone, Sephora sent Kelly 21 text messages in total, between 11:25 p.m. and 2:42 a.m., “a clear violation of the TCPA’s calling hours restrictions,” it said. Kelly’s existing business relationship with Sephora “ceased to exist the minute she opted out of its text messaging campaign,” said the complaint. Kelly’s first request to stop texting should have “triggered” Sephora’s obligation under the TCPA to put her number on its internal DNC list, “both under the relevant regulations and under its own internal policies,” it said. But Sephora failed to do that and enforce its internal DNC list policies, it said. Sephora, therefore, “illegally and knowingly” continued to contact Kelly after she requested that Sephora stop texting her, it said.
Long Wongs, a wings and burger restaurant in Chandler, Arizona, exhibited eight Ultimate Fighting Championship and boxing pay-per-view broadcasts for its customers between January 2019 and March 2023 without a sublicense or authorization to do so, alleged rights holder Joe Hand Promotions in a Communications Act complaint Thursday (docket 2:24-cv-00538) in U.S. District Court for Arizona in Phoenix. The suit names the establishment and its owners, Victor Martinez and Edgar Martinez, as defendants. The broadcasts originated via satellite uplink and were retransmitted interstate to cable systems and satellite television companies via satellite signal, said the complaint. The interstate satellite transmissions were electronically scrambled and weren’t “available to or intended for the free use of the general public,” it said. The broadcasts were legally available to the defendants for a commercial sublicense fee, determined by the capacity of the establishment, it said. But the defendants chose not to contract with Joe Hand and instead “took affirmative steps to circumvent the commercial sublicensing requirement" and unlawfully obtained each of the broadcasts, it said. The defendants “willfully engaged in wrongful acts” to intercept each of the broadcasts for free, while Joe Hand’s “legitimate customers paid substantially more for the proper commercial sublicenses,” it said. The complaint seeks statutory damages of up to the maximum of $110,000 for each willful violation.
Communications Litigation Today is tracking the below lawsuits involving appeals of FCC actions. Cases marked with an * were terminated since the last update. Cases in bold are new since the last update.
Calling Internet Archive’s controlled digital lending (CDL) an “industrial infringement program,” four publishers said in a Friday appellee brief (docket 23-1260) in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Appeals Court that IA “obtains physical copies of millions of in-copyright books, scans them without authorization in offshore scanning centers, and distributes the resulting ebooks online, where they can be read in full by anyone in the world without any payment to the copyright owner.”
The Media Alliance and Great Public Schools Now nonprofits, which filed a petition for review challenging portions of the FCC’s Nov. 20 digital discrimination order under the Administrative Procedure Act, seek to intervene on the FCC’s behalf against the 20 industry petitioners who want to set the entire order aside (see 2403140042), said their motion Friday (docket 24-1315) in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If the industry petitioners are successful in having the FCC’s digital discrimination rules vacated, communities that nonprofits advocate for -- including disproportionately low-income communities and communities of color -- “will be left with inferior options with limited speeds and increasing prices,” said their motion. This would harm their interests “in advancing equitable broadband access for their members and constituents, who, because of their race, ethnicity, color, income level, religion, or national origin, lack access to quality, affordable broadband,” it said.
The district court correctly concluded that when purchasing toll-free calls from third parties that were destined for AT&T’s customers, Core Communications didn’t provide its tariffed switched access services to AT&T and therefore couldn’t collect from AT&T its tariffed rates for that service, said AT&T’s appellee brief Thursday (docket 23-3022) at the 3rd U.S. Circuit Appeals Court. Core’s appeal seeks to reverse the district court’s Oct. 13 summary judgment decision in AT&T’s favor (see 2310160018).
Political consultant Steve Kramer, broadband provider Lingo Telecom and robocall broadcaster Life Corp sent “thousands of robocalls” two days before the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary to people they thought were likely Democratic voters, featuring deepfake simulations of the voice of President Joe Biden, alleged a complaint Thursday (docket 1:24-cv-00073) in U.S. District Court for New Hampshire in Concord.
Louisiana heads to the U.S. Supreme Court “to defend our First Amendment rights against government censorship,” said a media alert Wednesday from the office of Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill (R), trumpeting oral argument Monday in Murthy v. Missouri (docket 23-411) (see 2401290058). Louisiana and Missouri are the two state respondents challenging the government’s petition to vacate the injunction that would block officials from the White House and four federal agencies from coercing social media platforms to moderate their content. The Supreme Court has stayed the injunction pending its resolution of the case (see 2310230003). When George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949 as a warning against tyranny, “he never intended it to be used as a how-to guide by the federal government,” said the Murrill media alert. Yet Murthy v. Missouri has uncovered more than 20,000 pages of documents “highlighting an extensive censorship campaign stemming directly” from President Joe Biden and his federal government, it said: “As a result, this has become one of the most important cases in a century related to the First Amendment.” The state respondents “will present a powerful argument” to the Supreme Court, “which we believe will validate the original ruling by a district judge that Biden’s censorship enterprise is a massive violation of the First Amendment,” it said. “We hope to get a strong, powerful message” from the Supreme Court that the First Amendment “still matters and that the federal government cannot engage in a broad ranging enterprise to stifle protected speech,” it said.
Defendants Abdoulaye Niang, Alexander Niang, Mewza LLC, Abarika LLC and Henan Fanding Network Technology fraudulently claim they are original creators of the Rainbow Friends video game characters “Purple” and “Green,” alleged a trademark infringement suit Wednesday (docket 1:24-cv-01913) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan.