A Texas entity, High Sharp, prepaid $19.1 million to a subsidiary of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co., China’s largest chipmaker, to procure wafers for use in producing cryptocurrency “miners” during their peak demand in 2021, but never received the goods, alleged a fraud complaint Monday (docket 2:23-cv-08934) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles. A miner is a specialized computer designed for the single purpose of mining new cryptocurrencies “by solving complex mathematical puzzles,” said the complaint. Each time a puzzle is solved, the owner of the miner is rewarded with cryptocurrency, it said. The SMIC subsidiary and its officers “never intended to deliver any wafers,” said the complaint. They instead used the prepayment “to fund the manufacture and delivery of wafers to third parties after conducting a secret bidding war to fetch the highest price possible,” it said. High Sharp “entirely missed its bargained-for and intended opportunity,” because the cryptocurrency market “cooled during the time period” in which it discovered the defendants’ “intentional malfeasance,” it said. The complaint seeks restitution of the $19.1 million prepaid, plus “exemplary and punitive damages in a sum according to proof.”
1Global, telecom company headquartered in London, adds former Vodafone Germany CEO Hannes Ametsreiter to its board as a nonexecutive director ... WeWork, flexible workspace provider, names David Tolley CEO; Tolley was interim WeWork CEO since May, and previously was Intelsat chief financial officer ... Morse Micro, fabless semiconductor company specializing in IoT connectivity, hires Stryker’s Prakash Guda as vice president-marketing and product management ... Internet service provider Smartaira names Hotwire’s Darren Rish, also ex-Comcast, CEO, and moves founder and former CEO Dan Terheggen to board chairman.
The allegations of nine iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus users that Apple falsely promoted iOS 15 as improving the performance of their older devices but instead degraded the devices’ performance (see 2308030055) “undermine the entirety of their complaint,” said Apple’s memorandum of points and authorities Friday (docket 5:23-cv-03882) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose in support of its motion to dismiss. The plaintiffs concede they voluntarily installed iOS 15, and that alone “warrants dismissal of the computer-intrusion claims, all of which require that Apple accessed their iPhones without their permission,” said the memorandum. The complaint also asserts Apple designed iOS 15 to harness new technology and to protect devices from security vulnerabilities, not to harm older devices, so they can’t “plausibly allege intent to damage their devices,” it said. The complaint also doesn’t identify “an actionable misstatement or omission -- let alone one that plaintiffs relied on -- so their consumer-protection claims cannot survive,” it said. Those “overarching flaws” aren’t the complaint’s only problems, said the memorandum. It contains a range of additional “claim-specific deficiencies” that provide independent grounds for dismissal of many of the claims, it said. A private right of action is available under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act only if plaintiffs allege at least $5,000 in losses during a single year, but the complaint “makes no attempt to quantify the alleged injuries here,” it said. The trespass claim “requires significant interference with plaintiffs’ property interest in their iPhones,” said the memorandum. That’s a standard “not met by assertions of reduced battery life or delays of a fraction of a second in opening apps,” as the plaintiffs claim they encountered on their iPhone 7s after installing the iOS 15 update, it said. The trespass claim also is barred by the “economic loss rule,” which limits tort recovery “to narrow circumstances not alleged here,” it said. The California False Advertising Law and Unfair Competition Law claims also should be dismissed “because they are equitable claims for which jurisdiction and statutory standing is lacking,” it said. The Louisiana Unfair Trade Practices Act claim is untimely “and not based on an actionable economic injury,” it said. A range of factors, including the amount of available memory, battery health, cell signal strength and outdated apps, could affect device performance, said Apple. But the plaintiffs claim “this purported performance degradation occurred because iOS 15 was optimized for newer iPhone models with more powerful chips,” it said.
Federal law requires a dismissal of Comcast’s complaint against MaxLinear for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction with leave to replead, said an order signed Thursday by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein for Southern New York in Manhattan. Comcast sued MaxLinear May 26 to block it from walking away from its “contractual obligations” to supply chips for millions of broadband gateways used to provide internet service to Comcast customers (see 2305300045). For diversity purposes, an LLC is a citizen of every state in which its partners, or members, are citizens, said the order. This requires that all members of a plaintiff LLC be domiciled in different states than all members of a defendant LLC, it said. The diversity of all members, moreover, “must be specifically pled in the complaint,” it said. Here, Comcast “failed to make the appropriate assertions as to the citizenship of the LLCs’ members, therefore rendering the statement of jurisdiction insufficient,” it said. Hellerstein’s order dismissing Comcast’s complaint without prejudice instructed Comcast to file an amended complaint within 30 days, “which shall comport with the rules for pleading diversity in a case involving an LLC,” it said.
New hires at Grindr, social network for the LGBTQ community: Zac Katz, former FCC chief of staff and chief counsel under President Barack Obama, as general counsel and head-global affairs; Tristan Pineiro, ex-King, also former Netflix, as vice president-brand and communications; and Solmaz Shariat Torbaghan, ex-Varian, as director-AI and machine learning ... NTT Research names Timothee Leleu, ex-University of Tokyo, senior research scientist and a group head-Physics and Informatics (PHI) Lab; it also names Victor Bastidas, from National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, and Maya Okawa, from Kyoto University, research scientists in the PHI Lab; Abhishek Jain, from Johns Hopkins University, joins as senior scientist in the Cryptography and Information Security (CIS) Lab; and Manae Abe, from Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, becomes marketing coordinator; joining NTT Research as post-doctoral fellows are Kyungduk Kim, Midya Parto and Ryotatsu Yanagimoto in the PHI Lab; and Naresh Boddu Goud and Xiao Liang in the CIS Lab ... Faraday Future, electric mobility ecosystem company, names Healthpeak Properties’ Scott Graziano, also ex-Western Digital, global general counsel ... Quantum Computing adds New York University’s Javad Shabani to its technical advisory board, expanding it to four members ... Voyager Space adds former Air Force Chief Scientist Mark Lewis,Purdue Applied Research Institute, to its advisory board ... Spectra7 Microsystems, supplier of analog semiconductor products for broadband connectivity markets, names Kumu Networks’ Steffen Hahn senior vice president-engineering ... Syniverse names Sandra Rose, ex-Santander Consumer USA, chief human resources officer.
Four Democratic senators support keeping Chevron against the “decades-long effort by pro-corporate interests to eviscerate the federal government’s regulatory apparatus to the detriment of the American people,” said their U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief Thursday (docket 22-451) in support of the government respondents in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (see 2309170001). “The call here to overturn Chevron and dismantle agency powers is a special interest solution in search of a problem,” said Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Dianne Feinstein of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
California’s $93 million settlement with Google resolves a multiyear investigation into the tech company’s location-privacy practices, said Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) in a Thursday news release. The California Department of Justice determined Google was ” deceiving users by collecting, storing, and using their location data for consumer profiling and advertising purposes without informed consent,” Bonta said.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein for Southern New York in Manhattan approved the stipulation between Comcast Cable and MaxLinear and their attorneys that assures Comcast will be able to continue sourcing MaxLinear chips for its broadband gateways at least through late May, said Hellerstein’s signed order Tuesday (docket 1:23-cv-04436).
Digital Media Association hires Graham Davies, ex-Ivors Academy, president-CEO, beginning this fall with plans to relocate from the U.K. to the U.S. … News/Media Alliance names Regan Smith, ex-Spotify, as senior vice president-general counsel … DataDome provider of AI-powered online fraud and bot management, taps Ontinue’s Chris Raniere chief revenue officer … Starz hires Girl Scouts of the USA’s Sofia Chang, also ex-Warner Media, as executive vice president-chief distribution officer … New Motion Picture Association hires: Alivia Roberts, from office of Vice President Kamala Harris, and Katherine Grayson, from office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., both join as directors-federal government affairs; Charlie Schonberger, from National Governors Association, named manager-federal affairs and trade policy, effective Sept. 18; and LinkedIn’s Michael Rodriguez, also former assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, named senior litigation counsel and director-Americas, content protection … Business Wire hires RealNetworks’ Reza Rassool as CTO ... Web3 company Cosmic Wire names Solana Foundation’s Johnny Lee chief commercial officer ... Zenarate, AI simulation training platform, names CometChat’s Dan Mitzner chief marketing officer ... Oxio, telecom-as-a-service company, taps Google Fi’s Glenn Teuber as chief operating officer and Adil Belihomji, former Verizon vice president-technology, as chief technology officer.
Cogeco names former Bell Canada executive Tim Dinesen senior vice president-chief technology officer ... Chyron, digital broadcast titling and graphics systems provider, hires Pantaflix Technologies' Alain Polgar as senior vice president-sales, Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific ... UPS promotes Bobby Seo to managing director-UPS Korea ... Empower Media names Meta’s Yating Sun executive vice president and head-marketing science, and GroupM’s Art Zambianchi, also ex-Motorola Mobility, chief operating officer ... Shutterfly names Jan Paul Teuwen, ex-Lumileds, senior vice president-chief financial officer, effective Monday, succeeding Mike Eklund, leaving ... Panasas, data solutions company, names Seagate Technology’s Ken Claffey CEO, replacing Tom Shea, staying as COO ... Leidos promotes Amy Smith to senior vice president-government affairs ... Magnachip Semiconductor announces resignation of board member Mel Keating, effective immediately ... Industrial AI company Nanotronics names Eco’s Peter Hopkins president ... Fulex, e-commerce fulfillment company, hires Amazon’s Andrew Guider as director-operations ... Stream Data Centers names former Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jose Ruiz, from Equinix, senior vice president-global accounts and platform strategy, newly created role ... Cyara, customer experience AI platform, names former JPMorgan Chase and Target executive Fred Penteado vice president-revenue strategy and operations ... Cyemptive Technologies, cybersecurity solutions company, taps Vince Dova, former Joint Chiefs of Staff branch chief-cyber policy and capabilities, as vice president-security.