Tex. Attorney Gen. Greg Abbott (R) upped the ante in a suit against Sony BMG, adding allegations of harm to buyers of CDs ranging from Frank Sinatra to Switchfoot music. In Nov., Abbott sued the N.Y.-based firm under a new state spyware law, becoming the first state official to pursue Sony in court for embedding spyware in products. The original Sony rootkit brouhaha (WID Nov 23 p4), involving First4Internet XCP technology, prompted lawsuits, consumer alerts and an industry-wide wake-up call.
Tex. Attorney Gen. Greg Abbott upped the ante in a suit against Sony BMG, adding allegations of harm to buyers of CDs ranging from Frank Sinatra to Switchfoot. In Nov., Abbott (R) sued the N.Y.-based firm under a new state spyware law -- the first state official to pursue Sony in court for embedding spyware in products. The original Sony rootkit brouhaha (CED Nov 23 p8), involving First4Internet XCP technology, prompted lawsuits, consumer alerts and an industry-wide wake-up call.
FCC Comr. nominee Deborah Tate has a reputation in the telecom industry as an advocate of a consumer-centric approach rather than regulatory restraints on market power, observers said. She hasn’t left much of a mark on wireless issues while at the Tenn. Regulatory Authority (TRA), but repeatedly has pushed for state-federal partnership in regulating IP-enabled services, they said. “Tate has demonstrated a knack for balancing between a role for regulation and trust the market that bodes well for her success at the FCC,” a wireless industry source said.
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) upheld a Gateway appeal, ruling the PC maker didn’t engage in a “literal” infringement of Hewlett-Packard patents related to legacy circuitry for parallel-port printer technology. The ITC returned the case to an administrate law judge for further proceedings. “Our history as a company makes it clear we respect the intellectual property of others, and that we expect others to respect ours,” Michael Tyler, Gateway’s chief legal officer, said in a statement. Gateway and HP have battled in the courts almost 3 years. HP filed a complaint with the ITC in May 2004, seeking to ban Gateway from importing PCs and components that it claimed infringed 7 of its patents. Gateway countered by filing its own ITC complaint seeking to bar HP from importing certain PCs, monitors and components used to make them that Gateway said infringed 3 patents tied to multimedia functions in keyboards and displays. The legal fight began in March 2003, when HP sued Gateway in U.S. Dist. Court, L.A., alleging that it violated 6 PC-related patents and refused to compensate the company.
State regulators in the Gulf states haven’t sorted out what, if anything, they can do to encourage the telephone and electric utilities they regulate to minimize damage and speed recovery from natural disasters like hurricanes and blizzards.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted the following to its Web site:
The Hawaii Supreme Court Fri. denied a $300 million class action suit against Verizon Hawaii challenging a surcharge on touch tone service. Plaintiffs said Verizon engaged in unfair trade practice by imposing the surcharge without telling consumers they get touch tone service simply by plugging a phone into a jack, without signing up for it or paying a fee. The court said the surcharge was lawful under the filed-rate doctrine because the charges appear in tariffs approved by state regulators. Wiley, Rein & Fielding attorneys who argued the case said awarding damages “would violate the filed-rate doctrine by effectively imposing a lower rate for [touch tone] services than that explicitly set and repeatedly affirmed by state regulators in several tariffs.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted to its Web site a notice announcing new benefits for participation in the Importer Self-Assessment (ISA) program which are in addition to the original ISA participation benefits (see below).
SBC and AT&T cleared the last regulatory obstacle to their merger Fri. as the Cal. PUC voted 4-1 to approve the transaction. Cal. was the last to act of the 36 states whose merger approval was required by SBC-AT&T. With all necessary federal and state approvals in hand, the companies immediately closed on their merger. At the same meeting, the PUC also voted 3-2 to approve the Verizon-MCI merger.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has issued a notice inviting comments from interested parties on the International Trade Commission's (ITC's) proposed remedies, and other possible actions, with respect to the market disruption caused by imports of circular welded non-alloy steel pipe from China.