The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon today, with 17 states joining the federal agency. The case isn’t a surprise (the FTC was reported to be nearly ready to file in late August), but its specifics weren’t yet known. The FTC accuses the online retailer of monopolistic practices, including preventing merchants from offering lower prices on other platforms while forcing them to use Amazon’s logistics service if they wanted to be listed as part of Prime shipping perks for customers. “Today’s lawsuit seeks to hold Amazon to account for these monopolistic practices and restore the lost promise of free and fair competition,” said FTC chair Lina Khan, according toThe New York Times.

The FTC has had its eye on Amazon for several years. This is the fourth action the agency has taken against the company this year. Amazon settled a previous lawsuit (for $30.8 million) over Alexa children’s privacy concerns and snooping with Ring cameras. In June, the FTC sued the retailer again, claiming the company tricked customers into signing up for Prime subscriptions and then made it hard to cancel them. Those factors allegedly led to higher prices and an inferior shopping experience.

“Today’s suit makes clear the FTC’s focus has radically departed from its mission of protecting consumers and competition,” said David Zapolsky, Amazon Senior Vice President of Global Public Policy and General Counsel. “The practices the FTC is challenging have helped to spur competition and innovation across the retail industry, and have produced greater selection, lower prices, and faster delivery speeds for Amazon customers and greater opportunity for the many businesses that sell in Amazon’s store. If the FTC gets its way, the result would be fewer products to choose from, higher prices, slower deliveries for consumers, and reduced options for small businesses—the opposite of what antitrust law is designed to do. The lawsuit filed by the FTC today is wrong on the facts and the law, and we look forward to making that case in court.”

The Federal Trade Commission looks set to drag Amazon into another legal battle between the two sides. The agency is preparing to file an antitrust suit against Amazon as soon as next week, according to Bloomberg. Reuters reports that the FTC has sent a draft complaint to attorneys general in an attempt to get as many states as possible on board with its case.

The details of the long-awaited legal challenge are not known as yet. It's anticipated that the FTC will take aim at Amazon Prime, as well as claims that Amazon pushes third-party sellers to use its logistics and advertising services. The FTC is also said to believe that Amazon has rules to prevent products from being sold for less on rival platforms, which could be a factor in the suit (California has sued Amazon over that alleged practice).

The FTC has been scrutinizing Amazon for several years. If it files suit next week, that will mark the fourth action it has taken against the company this year. In May, the agency sued Amazon over children's privacy concerns related to Alexa and claims that it was snooping on Ring users. Amazon paid a total of $30.8 million to quickly settle charges in both cases.

The following month, the FTC filed another complaint against Amazon, this time claiming that the company coerced people into signing up for a Prime subscription then making it difficult for them to cancel. That case is still ongoing. This week, the agency added three Amazon executives as defendants. It claims those individuals rebuffed pleas from Amazon employees to stop using deceptive tactics to trick people into signing up for a recurring payment through Prime.

The European Commission has imposed a €376.36 million ($400 million) fine on Intel for blocking the sales of devices powered by its competitors' x86 CPUs. This brings one part of the company's long-running antitrust court battle with the European authority to a close. If you'll recall, the Commission slapped the chipmaker with a record-breaking €1.06 billion ($1.13 billion) fine in 2009 after it had determined that Intel abused its dominant position in the market. ye

It found back then that the company gave hidden rebates and incentives to manufacturers like HP, Dell and Lenovo for buying all or almost all their processors from Intel. The Commission also found that Intel paid manufacturers to delay or to completely cease the launch of products powered by its rivals' CPUs "naked restrictions." Other times, Intel apparently paid companies to limit those products' sales channels. The Commission calls these actions "naked restrictions."

The case has gone through several European courts since then, with either side lodging an appeal, depending on what the decision was. In 2017, the highest court in the European Union ordered the fine to be re-examined on the basis that the Commission didn't conduct an economic assessment on how Intel's activity impacted its rivals' ability to compete against it. 

Europe's second highest court, the General Court, then decided last year that the Commission indeed failed to perform analysis of the company's rebate scheme. As a result, it came to the conclusion that it couldn't determine how the incentives Intel offered affected its competitors. It also scrapped Intel's €1.06 billion fine, explaining that it's not in a position to determine how much it actually has to pay, but it upheld previous courts' decision that the company's naked restrictions violated EU laws.

In its announcement, the European Commission gave a few examples of how Intel hindered the sales of competing products. It apparently paid HP between November 2002 and May 2005 to sell AMD-powered business desktops only to small- and medium-sized enterprises and via direct distribution channels. It also paid Acer to delay the launch of an AMD-based notebook from September 2003 to January 2004. Intel paid Lenovo to push back the launch of AMD-based notebooks for half a year, as well.

The Commission has since appealed the General Court's decision to dismiss the part of the case related to the rebates Intel offered its clients. Intel, however, did not lodge an appeal for the court's ruling on naked restrictions, setting it in stone. "With today's decision, the Commission has re-imposed a fine on Intel only for its naked restrictions practice," the European authority wrote. "The fine does not relate to Intel's conditional rebates practice. The fine amount, which is based on the same parameters as the 2009 Commission's decision, reflects the narrower scope of the infringement compared to that decision." Seeing as the rebates part of the case is under appeal, Intel could still pay the rest of the fine in the future.

Bill Willingham, the creator of the comic book series Fables, says you now own his work, fully and for all time. Willingham has released his work, which served as the basis for Telltale Games' The Wolf Among Us, to public domain — mostly because he can't afford to sue DC Comics. In a lengthy post on his Substack page, the artist went pretty in depth in explaining his beef with the publisher. He said the people he negotiated with 20 years ago had already been replaced by people "of no measurable integrity, who now choose to interpret every facet of [their] contract in ways that only benefit DC Comics and its owner companies."

Based on Willingham's account of what happened, DC would routinely overlook his input on things like artists for covers or formatting for new collections. That's pretty innocuous compared to his other allegations, though, including getting royalties late or DC under-reporting royalties so as not to pay him what he's owed. But the artist said that the company recently went beyond these "mere annoyances" and tried to forcibly take Fables' ownership from him. 

He mentioned Telltale Games in particular, when he talked about how DC execs allegedly admitted that they believe they could do anything with the property. That's including not protecting the integrity of its stories and characters from third parties — Telltale Games, in other words — that want to radically alter them. Further, he apparently gets no money from DC licensing his work to third parties.

While Willingham knows that he's still bound by his contract with DC and cannot release anything Fables related without the company's consent, he argued in his post that you're not. "[Y]ou have the rights to make your Fables movies, and cartoons, and publish your Fables books, and manufacture your Fables toys, and do anything you want with your property, because it’s your property," he said.

DC, however, has disagreed with Willingham and his interpretation of their contract and copyright law. "The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC, and the storylines, characters, and elements therein, are owned by DC and protected under the copyright laws of the United States and throughout the world in accordance with applicable law and are not in the public domain," the company told CBR in a statement. "DC reserves all rights and will take such action as DC deems necessary or appropriate to protect its intellectual property rights."

It's unclear if this development will have any effect on Telltale's The Wolf Among Us 2, which is scheduled for release in 2024. The game was supposed to be available this year, but the developer chose to push back its launch, because it needed time to switch from using Unreal Engine 4 to 5 and that involved changes to personnel and the development process. 

Google will pay $93 million in a settlement it reached with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, resolving allegations that the company’s location-privacy practices violated the state’s consumer protection laws. The California Department of Justice claimed that Google was “collecting, storing, and using their location data” for consumer advertising purposes without informed consent.

The complaint alleges that Google continued to collect consumer data related to a user’s location even when a user turned the “location history” feature off. The company settled similar lawsuits in Arizona and Washington last year for illegally tracking consumers.

In addition to paying $93 million, Google agreed to “deter future misconduct.” This settlement, which won’t really hurt Google’s deep pockets, is important because the tech giant generates the majority of its revenue from advertising and location-based advertising is a critical feature of its advertising platform.

Moving forward, the California AG is asking Google to provide additional transparency about location tracking by providing users with detailed information about location data it collects. The company must also provide disclaimers to users that their location information may be used for ad personalization.

Engadget reached out to Google for comment but didn't receive a response.

The Supreme Court has temporarily halted a lower court ruling that prohibited White House officials from communicating with social media companies. The temporary stay, from Justice Samuel Alito, is the latest twist in a controversial attempt by two states to challenge content moderation policies at social media platforms.

The case stems from a lawsuit, brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, that claimed federal officials overreached in their dealings with social media companies — namely Meta, Google and Twitter — as they shaped moderation policies to handle election and COVID-19 misinformation.

A lower court had previously issued an injunction that barred White House and other federal officials from communicating with social media companies. An Appeals Court decision last week eased many of the initial restrictions, but left in place a provision that banned the surgeon general, CDC and White House officials from “pressuring” social media companies into making decisions. That order, as CNN reports, was set to take effect September 18.

That ruling is now on hold, thanks to Alito’s temporary stay, as the two sides continue to argue the case. As Bloomberg points out, the stay will be in effect until September 22, though it could be extended. 

In a filing ahead of the stay, the Solicitor General argued that “the injunction would impose grave harms on the government and the public” and that that government officials had committed no wrongdoing in their interactions with social media companies. “Rather than any pattern of coercive threats backed by sanctions, the record reflects a back-and-forth in which the government and platforms often shared goals and worked together, sometimes disagreed, and occasionally became frustrated with one another, as all parties articulated and pursued their own goals and interests during an unprecedented pandemic.”

While the current hold from Alito is another temporary measure, the case seems to be headed for a longer legal battle. The Justice Department is now laying the groundwork for a Supreme Court appeal, which could drag the case out even more.

X, the social media company previously known as Twitter, is suing the state of California over a law that requires companies to disclose details about their content moderation practices. The law, known as AB 587, requires social media companies to publish information about their handling of hate speech, extremism, misinformation and other issues, as well as details about internal moderation processes.

Lawyers for X argue that the law is unconstitutional and will lead to censorship. It “has both the purpose and likely effect of pressuring companies such as X Corp. to remove, demonetize, or deprioritize constitutionally-protected speech,” the company wrote in the lawsuit. “The true intent of AB 587 is to pressure social media platforms to ‘eliminate’ certain constitutionally-protected content viewed by the State as problematic.”

X is not alone in its opposition to the law. Though the measure was backed by some activists, a number of industry groups took issue with AB 587. Netchoice, a trade group which represents Meta, Google, TikTok and other tech companies, argued last year that AB 587 would help bad actors evade companies’ security measures, and make it harder for them to enforce their rules.

At the same time, AB 587's backers have said it’s necessary to increase the transparency of major platforms. “If @X has nothing to hide, then they should have no objection to this bill,” Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel, who wrote AB 587, said in response to X’s lawsuit.

There’s no denying Nintendo’s Switch, at 6.5 years, is reaching the end. Nintendo is (finally) gearing up for what’s next and was reportedly showing tech demos of its next-gen system to developers at Gamescom last month.

According to Eurogamer, one of the Switch 2 demos was a beefed-up version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It was apparently a tech demo, showing the world of Hyrule at a higher frame rate and resolution than the existing game.

Engadget

VGC says another tech demo was The Matrix Awakens, running on the dev kit. The captivating tech demo was originally designed to highlight what Unreal Engine 5 can do on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but Nintendo got it working on an early version of its next system. The Switch 2 demo also featured NVIDIA’s DLSS upscaling tech, ray-tracing and visuals comparable to those on the PS5 and Series X. DLSS support is key, as that could help Nintendo run games at higher frame rates and resolution without having to use more powerful components.

Nintendo is expected to release its next console in 2024 – but what will be its unique trick?

– Mat Smith

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BMW’s terrible heated seats subscription didn’t make it to a second winter

Drivers will no longer have to deal with hardware paywalls in the brand’s cars.

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BMW is one of several automakers that have been nickel and diming customers, with a monthly subscription for heated seats (which already exist in these vehicles) in certain models and territories. The company has dropped that controversial practice to focus on paid software services — it no longer plans to charge drivers extra to use hardware features already in their cars.

Drivers didn’t take to the $18 per month heated seats subscription in the countries where BMW offered that, er, perk. “We thought that we would provide an extra service to the customer by offering the chance to activate that later, but the user acceptance isn’t that high,” Pieter Nota, BMW’s board member for sales and marketing, said.

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iOS apps will publish to the Apple Vision Pro store by default

This should give headset owners access to ‘hundreds of thousands’ of applications.

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We haven’t heard much about Apple’s mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, in recent weeks, but in the runup to Apple’s big event next week, the company has elaborated on the device’s app offerings. It’s announced every iOS app will automatically publish to the Vision Pro store by default, which the company says will give early adopters access to “hundreds of thousands of iPad and iPhone apps.” Most apps can easily run on Vision Pro, but you won’t get a full futuristic experience. Instead, you’ll see what you normally see on your phone or tablet, just blown up on a fake screen before you.

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Walgreens agrees to pay $44 million to Theranos blood test customers

The company used to offer Theranos’ faulty blood tests in its stores.

There was a time when Walgreens championed Theranos’ blood tests and offered them at “wellness centers” in its stores. That was before it came to light that Theranos’ tests were faulty. Now, according to Bloomberg, Walgreens has agreed to pay $44 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by customers who received flawed Theranos blood tests. A court still has to approve the proposal, but based on the court filing by the plaintiffs, those customers will receive around double their out-of-pocket damages if the terms remain unaltered.

Continue reading.

There was a time when Walgreens championed Theranos' blood tests and offered them at "wellness centers" in its stores. That was before it came to light that Theranos' tests were faulty, leading to a bitter breakup between the two companies. Now, according to Bloomberg, Walgreens has agreed to pay $44 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by customers who received flawed Theranos blood tests through its centers in Arizona and California. 

Lawyers for both sides struck a deal after a US district judge ordered the case to go to trial, and they filed a notice for a tentative settlement back in May. A court still has to approve the proposal, but based on the court filing by the plaintiffs, those customers will receive around double their out-of-pocket damages if the terms remain unaltered. 

The lawsuit accused Walgreens of being "willfully blind" to its partnership with Theranos, alleging that it had good reason to be suspicious of the latter's fingerprick testing method. Bloomberg says the plaintiffs' lawyers have acknowledged, however, that Walgreens had a "potent" defense argument when it said that it was also defrauded by the blood-testing company. 

Walgreens took Theranos to court in 2016 for a reported $140 million shortly after it formally ended their relationship. They eventually settled the lawsuit in a way that "resolve[d] all claims," but details about that agreement were undisclosed. As for Theranos, well, the company is now dead, with company founder Elizabeth Holmes currently serving time in prison with a scheduled release date of December 29, 2032.

Google has tentatively settled with the alliance of attorneys general that filed a lawsuit in 2021 alleging the search giant abused its dominance on Android app distribution through the Google Play store. Officials claimed Google was leveraging “its monopoly power with Android to unlawfully maintain its monopoly,” saying that 90 percent of all app sales took place through Google Play. Bloomberg reports that the matter has been referred to a judge who, if happy, can confirm the settlement and cancel the pending courtroom battle. It’s a smart move on Google’s part as it has faced a number of antitrust lawsuits over its dominance and power in recent years, with outcomes including a €4.3 billion ($4.6 billion) fine and threats to break up its advertising business.

Not everyone is pleased about the latest deal, with Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney tweeting Epic isn’t included in the settlement. The games developer sued Google in 2020, alleging the latter had made deals with other big games publisher to box out rival app stores. Sweeney is also, as usual, grumbling about other stores asking a cut of each transaction to pay for the running costs of those stores.

Epic's trial against Google is set for November 6th, but Sweeney tweeted: "If Google is ending its payments monopoly without imposing a Google Tax on third party transactions, we'll settle and be Google's friend in their new era. But if the settlement merely pays off the other plaintiffs while leaving the Google Tax in place, we'll fight on. Consumers only benefit if antitrust enforcement not only opens up markets, but also restores price competition." The exact amount Google must pay and any necessary changes required have yet to be disclosed, but could be made public at an October 12th hearing.