Kalakshar US

We can all agree that robocalls are the worst. While there might never be a way to get rid of them entirely (though agencies are certainly working on it), one the most prolific sources of these intrusions is finally getting hauled into court.

CBS News reports that Attorneys General from 48 states (as well as DC) are coming together to file a bipartisan lawsuit against Arizona-based Avid Telecom, its owner Michael D. Lansky and vice president Stacey S. Reeves. The 141-page suit claims that the company illegally made over 7.5 billion calls to people on the National Do Not Call Registry. Arizona Attorney General Kris Meyes claims that nearly 197 million robocalls were made to phone numbers in her state over a five-year period between December 2018 and January 2023.

The lawsuit says that Avid Telecom spoofed phone numbers, including 8.4 million that appeared to be coming from the government or law enforcement, and others disguised as originating from Amazon, DirecTV and many more. The suit alleges that Avid Telecom violated the Telephone and Consumer Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule and several other telemarketing and consumer laws. 

The AGs are asking the court to enjoin Avid Telecom from making illegal robocalls, and to pay damages and restitution to the people it called illegally. They’re also pursuing several statutory avenues to make Avid cough of money on a per-violation basis, which given the enormous volume of calls it has made, could add up quickly. Sumco Panama, which was responsible for a comparatively smaller 5 billion robocalls, was fined nearly $300 million by the FCC late last year.

Earlier this month, it was reported that XCast Labs is being sued by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over allegedly helping other companies call those on the National Do Not Call Registry.

In 2017, Dish reached a settlement that cost them $210 million. The company allegedly made millions of calls in an attempt to sell and promote its satellite TV service. Dish ultimately had to pay a $126 million civil fine to the US government, and $84 million to residents in California, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio. Hopefully, we’ll see a similar result with Avid Telecom.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/company-responsible-for-75-billion-robocalls-sued-by-nearly-every-attorney-general-220050450.html?src=rss 

Google has just been hit with a $32.5 million penalty for infringing on a patent held by Sonos. According to Law360, a California federal jury ordered the fine after determining that Google infringed on a patent Sonos holds relating to grouping speakers so they can play audio at the same time, something the company has been doing for years. 

US District Judge William Alsup had already determined that early version of products like the Chromecast Audio and Google Home infringed on Sonos’ patent; the question was whether more recent, revamped products were also infringing on the patent. The jury found in favor of Sonos, but decided a second patent — one that relates to controlling devices via a smartphone or other device — wasn’t violated. They said that Sonos hadn’t convincingly shown that the Google Home app infringed on that particular patent. This follows the dismissal of four other patent violations that Sonos originally sued over.

Google provided Engadget with the following statement: “This is a narrow dispute about some very specific features that are not commonly used. Of the six patents Sonos originally asserted, only one was found to be infringed, and the rest were dismissed as invalid or not infringed. We have always developed technology independently and competed on the merit of our ideas. We are considering our next steps.” 

Today’s findings feels like a win for Sonos, who originally filed suit against Google all the way back in January of 2020. Specifically, Sonos claimed that Google gained knowledge of the patent through prior collaboration between the two companies, back they collaborated to allow for integration between Sonos’s speakers and Google Play Music.

Since then, Google counter-sued Sonos, claiming that Sonos had in fact infringed its own patents around smart speakers. As with any good legal battle, Sonos then expanded its own lawsuit a few months later. More recently, Google sued Sonos in 2022, saying that its new voice assistant infringed on seven patents relating to the Google Assistant. 

Whether today’s decision will slow the legal battle between the two companies remains to be seen, though we’d expect the bickering to continue full-throttle in the months to come. There are plenty of suits out there between the companies that aren’t yet resolved, and we’d expect Google to appeal this decision as well. We’ve reached out to both Sonos and Google and will update this story with anything we hear.

Update, May 26th 2023, 5:30PM ET: Added a statement from Google.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-fined-325-million-for-infringing-on-sonos-patent-210411398.html?src=rss