Microsoft, positioning itself in third place among console gaming companies behind Nintendo and Sony and with “next to no presence” in mobile gaming, is trying to become “more competitive” in the expanding mobile gaming space, it said Thursday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert for Northern Illinois in Chicago granted in a Friday docket entry plaintiffs Craigville Telephone and Consolidated Telephone’s Thursday partial consent motion (docket 1:19-cv-07190) to extend the deadline to amend pleadings and join parties in their class action against T-Mobile over false ring tones. T-Mobile had argued that plaintiffs’ interrogatories “did not need to be made” and should be denied (see 2212230004).

Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

The Dec. 8 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denying Nimitz Technologies mandamus relief from its dispute with a district judge (see 2212090027) is contrary to four Supreme Court decisions safeguarding the law of attorney-client privilege, said Nimitz in its Dec. 21 combined petition (docket 23-103) for panel rehearing or rehearing en banc.

A request to supplement a renewed motion to compel with related interrogatories “did not need to be made” and should be denied, said defendants T-Mobile and Inteliquent in a Dec. 21 response (docket 1:19-cv-07190) to Craigville Telephone and Consolidated Telephone’s Dec. 12 motion filed in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago.

An inter partes review (IPR) proceeding related to VLSI Technology’s $2.1 billion jury verdict against Intel can proceed, Patent and Trademark Office Director Kathi Vidal said Dec. 22, calling the merits in two related cases “compelling.”

U.S. District Judge William Orrick for Northern California in San Francisco signed an order Thursday (docket 3:22-cv-03580) denying the plaintiffs in a privacy class action their Aug. 25 motion for a preliminary injunction to enjoin Meta from intercepting and disseminating their patient information via the Pixel tracking tool. The plaintiffs represent one of seven consolidated cases.

The FCC's Q4 2022 universal service contribution factor proceeding isn't the right venue for challenging the constitutionality of the entire universal service fund regime, and Section 254 of the Communications Act "easily" answers questions about whether Congress wrongly delegated its lawmaking power by limiting and guiding the FCC's universal service implementation, the agency told the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Dec. 22. In a docket 22-13315 reply to a challenge to the USF (see 2211220075), the FCC said the 11th Circuit also lacks jurisdiction because the suit is attempting "an end-run" around time limits for challenging an agency rule. Counsel for the petitioners didn't comment Friday.

Facbook will pay $725 million to settle a U.S. class action lawsuit over its 2018 Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, parent company Meta said Thursday in a filing before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 18-md-02843-VC.

Many eyes were trained Thursday on U.S. District Court for Delaware for Chief Judge Colm Connolly’s reaction to Nimitz Technologies’ latest refusal to produce bank records, emails and other materials responsive to his Nov. 10 order for documents that would identify third-party funding of four Nimitz patent lawsuits against Bloomberg, BuzzFeed, Cnet and Imagine Learning.