Paul Gluckman

The first U.S. jury trial under the 2008 Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act “ended with a bang” when the BNSF Railway was hit with a $228 million judgment Oct. 12 for “recklessly or intentionally” violating the statute, the Perkins Coie law firm said in a Tuesday update. Plaintiff Richard Rogers sued BNSF in April 2019. He was a truck driver who dropped off and picked up loads at BNSF-operated rail yards. He was required to register with an automated gate system and to provide his fingerprint each time he entered the railyard. Rogers didn't give written consent to the collection of his fingerprints, nor was he informed of how long his fingerprint data would be stored, as required under the BIPA, said Perkins Coie. Court records show about three dozen BIPA lawsuits at various stages of disposition. In one of the more recent cases, Amazon and Amazon Web Services said last month they “expressly deny” the allegations in a complaint in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois that they violated the BIPA by using the company’s Rekognition facial-imaging technology to monitor employees in Amazon fulfillment centers (see [Ref:2209220050[).

The renewed application from Chinese company Sailed Technology asking the U.S. District Court for Western Washington to compel discovery from Amazon for a patent infringement case in China is the culmination of “a seven-year litigation campaign against Amazon, consisting of dozens of lawsuits in China and three lawsuits here in the U.S.,” said Amazon’s response Monday (docket 2:22-cv-01396). Sailed seeks to serve subpoenas on Amazon for deposition testimony and documents connected with a case brought in an intellectual property court in Nanjing, China, in which Amazon Echo and Fire products are alleged to have infringed one or more Sailed patents (see 2210110001).

Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward “has made no secret of her support for Donald Trump,” her concerns about the “integrity” of the 2020 election or her role in sending “an alternate slate of electors” to Washington, she told the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Monday in her emergency motion for an injunction, pending appeal, to block T-Mobile’s release of her phone records under subpoena from the House Jan. 6 Select Committee (see 2210170001). The “only reason” to subpoena Ward’s phone records “is to get at those with whom she associated and to question them about their communications” with the state GOP chair, she said in her reply (docket 22-16473) to the committee’s opposition.

The Motion Picture Association, on behalf of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, served five Digital Millennium Copyright Act subpoenas Thursday on content delivery network Cloudflare and Tonic, a national domain name registry, court records show. The subpoenas, requested through the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, order the companies to produce the identities of individuals affiliated with websites in their spheres believed to have “exploited” ACE members’ “exclusive rights in their copyrighted motion pictures without their authorization,” said a declaration (docket 2:22-mc-00197) in support of the petitions by Jan van Voorn, MPA executive vice president and chief-global content protection. ACE “is a global coalition of leading content creators and on-demand entertainment services committed to supporting the legal marketplace for video content and addressing the challenge of online piracy,” said van Voorn’s declaration. ACE members include the five major studios, plus Amazon and Netflix. Cloudflare and Tonic didn’t respond Tuesday to requests for comment.

AT&T Mobility needs until Nov. 21 to answer the Sept. 19 Communications Workers of America complaint to compel arbitration for DirecTV employees who CWA alleges were “unjustly” terminated during the summer of 2021 and are entitled to a grievance process under an existing collective bargaining agreement. Additional time is needed “to continue investigating the factual and legal basis” of CWA’s claims, “in advance of filing an appropriate response,” said an unopposed motion Monday (docket 1:22-cv-00954) in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in Austin.

U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika in Wilmington, Delaware, signed an order Thursday (docket 1:22-cv-01341) granting Averon’s motion for leave to file under seal its complaint alleging AT&T and mobile sign-in app ZenKey “misappropriated” its trade secrets.

T-Mobile told Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward that it plans to produce her phone records Wednesday under subpoena for the House Jan. 6 select committee investigating her efforts to thwart certification of the 2020 presidential election, the carrier told the 9th Circuit U.S. Appeals Court Friday (docket 22-16473) in a response Friday to Ward’s emergency motion, pending appeal, to block the records’ disclosure. T-Mobile again asserted it takes no position in the legal fight between Ward and the committee to procure the phone records.

CBE Customer Solutions removed to U.S. District Court in Manhattan a complaint in which Verizon Wireless alleges its debt-collection agency is guilty of breach of contract, said CBE's notice of removal Thursday (docket 1:22-cv-08703). The carrier alleges that CBE “refused to comply” with an indemnification agreement between the parties, costing the carrier nearly $6.1 million in damages and court costs spent in negotiating, finalizing and executing a Telephone Consumer Protection Act class settlement. CBE does not concede that the allegations “state a valid claim under applicable law,” it said in the notice.

The FTC said Thursday it’s unfazed by Meta’s motion to dismiss the agency’s amended complaint (docket 5:22-cv-04325) in U.S. District Court in San Jose, in which the FTC seeks an injunction to block Meta’s acquisition of Within Unlimited and its Supernatural virtual-reality fitness app on anticompetitive grounds (see 2210130082).

Comcast faces a Wednesday deadline to answer a Minnesota complaint that it violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act under a deadline extension order signed Oct. 3 by U.S. Magistrate Judge Leo Brisbois in Duluth. Comcast filed notice Sept. 28 to move to U.S. District Court in St. Paul (docket 0:22-cv-02377) the TCPA complaint filed Sept. 7 in Ramsey, Minnesota, state court.