March 2014

The Global Business Travel Association, a trade group for the world's business travelers, submitted its opposition last week to a plan by the Federal Communications Commission to lift a ban on voice calls on planes. The group, which represents about 6,000 travel managers, called onboard calls "detrimental to business travelers." The association even quoted folk singer Pete Seeger, who borrowed heavily from the book of Ecclesiastes when he wrote "there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak."

Washington can get a sneak peek of the war to come over Comcast’s plan to purchase Time Warner Cable -- on Facebook and Twitter. As Comcast readies its army of more than 100 lobbyists to sell the deal, some opponents also are taking aim, launching two pages this month on the social sites as unofficial hubs for stories and statements that slam the $45 billion megadeal.

There’s little that reflects the pages’ authorship, and the effort itself seems minuscule. But it actually demonstrates the new, early coordination among consumer groups like Public Knowledge and Free Press, and companies like Netflix and Cogent Communications. While many potential dissenting voices have been slow to surface, these and other players are making noise as they devise a strategy to fight Comcast’s well-funded campaign for Time Warner Cable. “It’s interesting how, by hanging up a shingle against the merger, all kinds of people come out of the woodwork wanting to work with us,” said Gene Kimmelman, president and CEO of Public Knowledge.

Judge Lucy H. Koh sits in the United States District Court in San Jose, near many Silicon Valley companies. Appointed to the federal court in 2010, Judge Koh, 45, is the first Asian-American district judge in the Northern District of California. She lives in Silicon Valley with her husband, a Stanford law professor, and their two children.

Judge Koh was born in the United States after her family immigrated from South Korea, and grew up in Mississippi. Her father, who died soon after the first Apple and Samsung patent trial, owned a sandwich shop, where the judge worked while she was a student. Her mother, a college professor, fled North Korea for Seoul when she was young. The judge attended Harvard for her undergraduate studies and law school, and then worked in Washington for the Senate Judiciary Committee and later for the Justice Department. In 1997, she moved to California to become a federal criminal prosecutor for the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Three years later, she moved to Silicon Valley to be closer to her grandparents, and joined the law firm McDermott Will & Emery, working as a patent litigator for tech companies.

US District Judge Lucy Koh denied efforts by Apple, Google, Adobe, and Intel to avoid trial on claims that they suppressed wages by agreeing not to hire one another’s employees.

The ruling clears the way for a trial scheduled to begin May 27 that could affect 64,000 people who worked at the four Silicon Valley companies between 2005 and 2009. The companies had asked Judge Koh to rule in their favor without a trial, but the judge said there was sufficient evidence to move ahead. “These agreements were negotiated by a small group of intertwining high-level executives” who also were “involved in strictly enforcing the agreements,” Judge Koh wrote.