This is the fourth issue of WilmerHale’s FRAND Quarterly: Navigating the Global SEP Landscape, a bulletin that highlights developments about the licensing, litigation, and regulation of patents that are or are claimed to be...more
For more than a decade, companies have benefited immensely from the U.S. Supreme Court's 2011 decision of AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, which upheld a company's right to compel consumers into participating in individual...more
For more than a decade, companies have benefited immensely from the United States Supreme Court decision of AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011), which upheld a company’s right to compel consumers into...more
This case addresses the construction of the articles “a” and “said” in relation to subsequently recited functions and whether “a” can be restricted to be singular in its meaning....more
In 2012, the plaintiff entered into a cellphone service contract with AT&T Mobility in which she agreed to arbitrate all disputes and claims with AT&T Mobility and its “subsidiaries, affiliates, agents, employees,...more
The plaintiff had filed a class action alleging that DIRECTV made calls to his cell phone in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. DIRECTV attempted to compel arbitration by relying on an agreement that the...more
Arbitration provisions appear in millions of contracts that cover many different types of agreements and transactions. For decades, the United States Supreme Court has expanded the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”), which...more
On November 13, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the Northern District of California’s denial of class certification in an action against Apple, Inc., holding that the plaintiffs’ expert’s wait-and-see approach to calculating the...more
Can an employee assent to arbitration through inaction? A recent decision from the U.S District Court for the District of New Jersey in AT&T Mobility Services LLC v. Horowitz addresses the same arbitration agreement...more
Three recent decisions in New Jersey shed new light on the ongoing tension between the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) and the standard of review utilized by the New Jersey courts concerning the enforceability of arbitration...more
On June 28, 2018, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau announced a Consent Decree with AT&T Mobility, LLC (“AT&T”) to resolve investigations into two 911 service outages in 2017. The outages lasted for more than five hours and...more
On March 8, 2018, the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation randomly selected the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to hear the petitions for review of the Federal Communications Commission’s...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit this week issued an en banc decision reversing an earlier Ninth Circuit panel order that had found the Federal Trade Commission has no authority over “common carriers,” including...more
The Republican-led FCC’s effort to get out of the business of regulating broadband providers’ consumer practices took a step forward on Monday. In an appeal that has been proceeding in parallel with the FCC’s “Restoring...more
On May 18, 2017, at the Federal Communication Commission’s (“FCC” or “Commission”) May Open Meeting, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (“Bureau”) presented its final report on its investigation into the VoLTE 911...more
On May 9, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an order granting a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) request for rehearing en banc of the court’s earlier decision to dismiss an FTC case against AT&T...more
Last week a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative judge ruled that AT&T Mobility interfered with employees’ labor rights with an overly broad privacy rule. The rule prohibited employees from recording any...more
On an issue that takes on new-found importance after FTC v. AT&T Mobility, a federal court in Montana granted summary judgment in favor of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a case alleging that the defendants violated the...more
On January 11, 2017, the FCC released its most extensive “policy review” of mobile broadband operators sponsored data offerings for zero-rated content and services since the Commission’s 2015 Open Internet Order. ...more
Last Thursday, in a vote split along party lines, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) approved a new regulatory regime staking its claim to privacy regulation of both fixed and mobile Internet service providers...more
The FTC has no jurisdiction over common carriers even when they engage in non-common carrier activity, according to a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit opinion. In FTC v. AT&T Mobility, No. 15-16585 (9th...more
On August 29th, a Ninth Circuit panel unanimously held that the FTC has no power to challenge “throttling” of unlimited data plan customers by mobile broadband providers as an “unfair or deceptive act.” The panel found that...more
On August 29, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a major decision restructuring how common carriers are regulated at the federal level. The Ninth Circuit interpreted Section 5 of the FTC Act, which...more
California’s resistance to the longstanding federal policy favoring arbitration frequently results in public expressions of frustration by the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. In over five years since the Supreme Court’s...more