April 2011

Attorneys for the Department of Justice and several states told a judge that they would not raise any objections to next month's expiration of Microsoft's decade-old antitrust settlement with the U.S government.

The plaintiffs' attorneys told US DC District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that they believed Microsoft has met the terms of the settlement, which mainly required the company to share Windows APIs and other key technical information with the broader tech industry and provide licenses on reasonable terms. The April 27 hearing was effectively the last chance for the DOJ or the states, which included California, New York, Massachusetts, and 14 others that sued Microsoft, as well as the District of Columbia, to raise objections to the May 12 expiration. In a brief filed prior to the hearing, the plaintiffs said Microsoft "has met the goals of the wind-down plan." The May 12 expiration will now kick in automatically, as no further court hearings are planned. The settlement's expiration isn't likely to have any immediate impact on Microsoft's product portfolio, and the company has stated that it plans to comply with most of its terms beyond May 12. But the fact that it no longer has to devote significant time and management resources to documenting its compliance should at the very least allow the company to make decisions more quickly and efficiently -- which is crucial as it comes under increased competitive pressure from Apple, Google, and other rivals.

Free speech advocates and Internet users are protesting new Indian regulations restricting Web content that, among other things, can be considered “disparaging,” “harassing,” “blasphemous” or “hateful.”

The new rules, quietly issued by the country’s Department of Information Technology earlier this month and only now attracting attention, allow officials and private citizens to demand that Internet sites and service providers remove content they consider objectionable on the basis of a long list of criteria. Critics of the new rules say the restrictions could severely curtail debate and discussion on the Internet, whose use has been growing fast in India. The list of objectionable content is sweeping and includes anything that “threatens the unity, integrity, defense, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states or public order.” The rules highlight the ambivalence with which Indian officials have long treated freedom of expression. The country’s constitution allows “reasonable restrictions” on free speech but lawmakers have periodically stretched that definition to ban books, movies and other material about sensitive subjects like sex, politics and religion.

The Supreme Court ruled that consumers can be bound by an arbitration clause in a cellphone deal or other contract even when state law permits a class-action lawsuit for claims arising from the deal.

In a 5-4 vote, the justices divided along familiar ideological lines, with conservatives in control. Dissenting liberal justices said the ruling would make it harder for consumers with small-dollar grievances to band together and sue corporations. California law bars class-action waivers when a contract is particularly one-sided. The law applies when there are unequal bargaining power between the two sides in the deal and the dispute involves a small amount of money and complaint of a deliberate scheme to defraud. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, noted that the Federal Arbitration Act, which bars states from discriminating against arbitration, was passed in 1925 in response to judges' "hostility" to such agreements. Scalia said the California law "stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment of the purposes and objectives to the FAA." If a state could block an agreement because it appeared one-sided, Judge Scalia said as he read portions of his opinion from the bench, "Nothing would stop states from declaring that all agreements for dispute resolution … are 'unconscionable'" in many circumstances. Judge Scalia also disputed the contention of dissenting justices that people with small-dollar grievances would end up dropping them. "The claim here was most unlikely to go unresolved," Judge Scalia wrote. "The arbitration agreement provides that AT&T will pay claimants a minimum of $7,500 and twice their attorney's fees if they obtain an arbitration award greater than AT&T's last settlement offer."

AT&T said that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should leave its review of AT&T's $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile separate from the process examining AT&T's purchase of spectrum from Qualcomm. Opponents to the AT&T|T-Mobile deal asked the FCC to combine the reviews, betting that combining the reviews would strengthen their argument that AT&T is grabbing a lot of power in the wireless market. AT&T said: "These are two completely separate proceedings and should remain so. The FCC has been fully briefed by all interested parties on our application to acquire spectrum from Qualcomm." The company is 77 days into the 180-day shot clock on the Qualcomm spectrum acquisition.