A second class-action fraud complaint in four weeks accuses Samsung of duping consumers by using the “game optimizing service” apps on its Galaxy smartphones to artificially boost the devices’ performance when they detect “benchmarking apps” used by reviewers to grade and compare a phone’s speed and other attributes against competitive models. Consumers from seven states brought the complaint against Samsung Friday in U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, alleging the OEM “puts cheating software on its devices that allow benchmark testing applications to run at high speed, while it throttles the speed and performance of every day applications in order to maintain safe operating temperatures and preserve battery life.” The result is that Samsung smartphones “fraudulently test at high performance rates that consumers will never experience with real-world applications,” said the complaint. “This lawsuit aims to put a stop to Samsung’s benchmark fraud and level the playing field.” Samsung didn’t comment. The earlier suit was filed March 11, also in Newark federal court (see 2203140002).
U.S. importers sourced 3.11 million TVs from all countries, in all sizes, in February, 1.3% fewer than in January but up 13.1% from February 2021, reported the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb portal Friday.
Information Resources Inc. will join with NPD to form a combined technology, analytics and data provider “that offers clients a view of total retail purchasing and consumption trends,” said the companies Thursday. The transaction is expected to close in 2022's second half. Terms weren't disclosed.
Six in 10 U.S. consumers think the war in Ukraine will cause inflation to worsen “significantly” in the next several months, the Conference Board reported Tuesday.
Though the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled April 1 that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative violated the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act when it failed in its final tariff notices to publicly connect the Lists 3 and 4A Section 301 comments it received with the tariff decisions it made (see 2204010059), the three-judge panel absolved the agency of APA wrongdoing amid plaintiffs’ allegations it ran sloppy rulemakings.
A Nov. 19 complaint alleging Amazon dupes the public by purporting to sell consumers digital movies it owns when it only licenses them temporarily from content owners was transferred Wednesday to U.S. District Court in Seattle and assigned a new docket (2:22-cv-446, in Pacer). The complaint, which seeks class-action status, was originally filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan because lead plaintiff Mary Baron is a Bronx resident. Amazon and the plaintiffs mutually agreed to transfer the case to Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered, and where it was assigned to U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, the docket shows. When Amazon’s licensing agreement with the content owner terminates for whatever reason, Amazon is required to pull the movie from a consumer’s “purchased folder,” which it does “without prior warning, and without providing any type of refund or remuneration,” alleged the complaint. Amazon hasn't filed an answer in the case, and didn’t respond to questions Wednesday seeking comment.
Friday’s unanimous three-judge opinion at the U.S. Court of International Trade remanding the Lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for correcting deficiencies in the agency’s Administrative Procedure Act compliance (see 2204010059) extends the current litigation at least until mid-summer. The opinion, written by Chief Judge Mark Barnett and coming two months to the day after Feb. 1 oral argument (see 2202010053), gives USTR 90 days, to June 30, to respond to the remand order, and orders the plaintiffs and the government to convene on a joint status report, including a proposed schedule on “the further disposition of this litigation,” for submission 14 days after USTR files its remand results.
U.S. and Canadian regulators cleared BlackBerry’s definitive agreement to sell the “legacy” portion of its patent portfolio to Catapult IP Innovations for $600 million (see 2201310001), said BlackBerry CEO John Chen on an earnings call Thursday for fiscal Q4 ended Feb. 28. Of the money changing hands in the sale, $450 million will be due at the close, the rest payable in installments, said Chen. BlackBerry will keep a license to the patents being sold, which mainly involve mobile devices, messaging, wireless networking and other businesses in which BlackBerry is no longer actively involved. “Completion of the remaining closing conditions, including financing, is targeted for the end of this quarter,” said Chen. “Following the sale of the legacy portion of the IP portfolio, we will still retain all patents related to our core IoT and cyber software businesses.” BlackBerry will “keep the door open for future monetization” of the patents it’s retaining, but revenue likely will be “minimal in the near term,” he said. “Upon the closure of the deal, we expect a reduction in the operating costs required to maintain our IP portfolio.”
Many of the commitments the Chinese made in the January 2020 phase one trade agreement with the U.S. (see 2001160022) “reflected changes that China had already been planning or pursuing for its own benefit or that otherwise served China’s interests,” said the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in its annual report Thursday on U.S. foreign trade barriers. Though China “followed through” in enacting some of its phase one pledges, “it has not yet implemented some of the more significant commitments and fell far short of implementing its commitments to purchase U.S. goods and services in 2020 and 2021,” said USTR.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative “properly exercised its authority” under the Section 307 modification provisions of the 1974 Trade Act when it ordered the imposition of the Lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled Friday. Test-case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products, plus the more than 3,600 complaints that followed, sought to vacate the tariffs on grounds that Lists 3 and 4A were unlawful without USTR launching a new Section 301 investigation tat formed the legal basis of the Lists 1 and 2 tariffs.