Washington DC Attorney General Karl Racine has filed a lawsuit against Grubhub over alleged hidden fees and other "deceptive trade practices." His office has accused Grubhub of violating the jurisdiction's Consumer Protection Procedures Act in eight separate ways.

"We're suing Grubhub for misleading District residents and taking advantage of local restaurants to boost its own profits," Racine wrote on Twitter. "Grubhub charges hidden fees and uses bait-and-switch tactics, all while pretending to help local businesses during the pandemic. This needs to stop."

Racine's office also claims the app charged users higher prices than they'd pay in restaurants and that it misrepresented an offer of "unlimited free delivery" with a Grubhub+ subscription, since customers still need to pay a service fee.

The suit alleges that Grubhub offered deliveries from more than 1,000 eateries in the area without restaurants' permission. It accused the company of listing phone numbers for restaurants that were actually routed to Grubhub workers and creating websites for restaurants without their consent or clearly disclosing that it operated the sites. Grubhub has ended those practices, as TechCrunch notes.

"In one of Grubhub’s most shameless moves, at the beginning of the pandemic, it ran a discount called 'Supper for Support,' ginning up business by claiming to help struggling restaurants, and then stuck restaurants with the bill," Racine said. "This program cut into struggling restaurants’ profit margins while padding Grubhub’s bottom line."

The promotion allowed restaurants to offer a $10 discount on orders over $30, but they had to cover the cost. Grubhub later offered them a $250 credit, as the suit notes.

"We are disappointed [the AG’s office has] moved forward with this lawsuit because our practices have always complied with DC law, and in any event, many of the practices at issue have been discontinued," Grubhub said in a statement. "We will aggressively defend our business in court and look forward to continuing to serve DC restaurants and diners.”

Grubhub says it has worked with Racine and his office over the last year to address concerns. In the wake of the lawsuit, the service is adding disclaimers about service fees for Grubhub+ subscribers and the fact prices may be lower at restaurants than in its app. Grubhub will also make it clearer that users can place orders for free through its app and website as long as they pick up food themselves. These changes will apply to everyone, not only users in DC.

The DC lawsuit is the latest in a number of legal battles over delivery apps' business practices. Chicago has also sued Grubhub (and DoorDash) over alleged deceptive delivery fees and charging higher prices for menu items than restaurants themselves do. In September, those two services and Uber Eats filed suit against New York City for placing limits on the fees they can charge restaurants.

Following years of litigation, Canadian “patent monetization” firm WiLAN has signed a licensing agreement with Apple. With the deal, the two companies have settled all court cases that were ongoing between them in the US, Canada and Germany related to a series of wireless technology patents. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

WiLAN’s dispute with Apple dates back to 2014 when the two companies went to court over two patents WiLAN claimed covered voice over LTE technologies featured in a variety of iPhone models at the time. Before today’s announcement, the most recent development in the dispute was that a jury reduced the damages Apple had been ordered to pay in 2018 from $145.1 million to $85.2 million. The decision came after a judge ordered a retrial after agreeing with Apple that WiLAN had used a flawed process to calculate the size of the damages owed to it by the iPhone-maker.

While this saga has come to a close, we don’t expect it will be the last time Apple and WiLAN lock horns. As something of a notorious patent troll, WiLAN has sued Apple a handful of times in the past, sometimes to mixed results. As one of the successful smartphone designers in the mobile industry, Apple makes for a seemingly irresistible target.

Following years of litigation, Canadian “patent monetization” firm WiLAN has signed a licensing agreement with Apple. With the deal, the two companies have settled all court cases that were ongoing between them in the US, Canada and Germany related to a series of wireless technology patents. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

WiLAN’s dispute with Apple dates back to 2014 when the two companies went to court over two patents WiLAN claimed covered voice over LTE technologies featured in a variety of iPhone models at the time. Before today’s announcement, the most recent development in the dispute was that a jury reduced the damages Apple had been ordered to pay in 2018 from $145.1 million to $85.2 million. The decision came after a judge ordered a retrial after agreeing with Apple that WiLAN had used a flawed process to calculate the size of the damages owed to it by the iPhone-maker.

While this saga has come to a close, we don’t expect it will be the last time Apple and WiLAN lock horns. As something of a notorious patent troll, WiLAN has sued Apple a handful of times in the past, sometimes to mixed results. As one of the successful smartphone designers in the mobile industry, Apple makes for a seemingly irresistible target.

The US Department of Justice has accused Google of training its employees on how to shield business communications from discovery in cases of legal disputes "by using false requests for legal advice." As Axios reports, the DOJ has told the judge overseeing its antitrust case against the tech giant that Google instructs employees to add in-house lawyers to written communication, apply attorney-client privilege labels to them and make a request for legal advice even when it's not needed. The department is now asking the judge to sanction the company "for its extensive and intentional efforts to misuse the attorney-client privilege to hide business documents relevant" to the case.

In the brief (PDF) its lawyers wrote for the judge, the DOJ said Google refers to the practice as "Communicate with Care" and that it first started no later than 2015. New employees are reportedly directed to follow the practice without discussion on whether it should only be used when legal advice is truly needed. In addition, Google allegedly provided the same training to teams handling search-distribution for the department's (and other authorities') antitrust cases. 

Google specifically told those teams to follow the practice for any written communication containing revenue-sharing agreements and mobile application distribution agreements, based on the presentation slides the DOJ included in its brief. Those agreements are central to the case. If you'll recall, the DOJ accused Google of having an unfair monopoly over search and search-related advertising in its 2020 antitrust lawsuit. It also questioned its terms for Android device manufacturers that force them to pre-load Google apps and set Google as the default search engine. 

According to the DOJ, statements such as "adding legal" or "adding [attorney] for legal advice" appear in thousands of Google documents. These emails apparently lacked any specific request for advice and attorneys rarely respond to them. In the brief, the department said the practice "pervades the entire company" and is being used even by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

The DOJ is now asking the court to hold Google's conduct as sanctionable and to order it to immediately produce "all withheld or redacted emails where no attorney responded to the purported request for legal advice."

Google spokesperson Julie Tarallo McAlister defended the company in a statement sent to Axios, however, calling the allegations "flatly wrong." McAlister said:

"Our teams have conscientiously worked for years to respond to inquiries and litigation, and suggestions to the contrary are flatly wrong. Just like other American companies, we educate our employees about legal privilege and when to seek legal advice. And we have produced over four million documents to the DOJ in this case alone — including many that employees had considered potentially privileged."

A judge in a Moscow court said on Monday that Instagram and Facebook were guilty of “extremist” activity, solidifying a ban on both platforms that went into effect earlier this month, reportedReuters. But the court also spared Whatsapp — one of Meta’s core products and one of the most popular messaging platforms in Russia — from the ban. Russian authorities decided to open a criminal case against Meta after Facebook’s decision to temporarily allow for calls of violence in Ukraine and select other countries. The outcome of that case was determined today in court.

Many Russia experts believe that the court chose not to include Whatsapp in the ban due to its ubiquitous status in the nation. Roughly 80 percent of Russians over the age of 14 use Whatsapp to communicate, according to a 2021 survey from Deloitte. Ironically, the case against Meta led to Whatsapp losing its status as the most popular messenger in Russia. Telegram, which millions of Russians downloaded in recent weeks due to uncertainty over Whatsapp's fate, is now the most popular messaging app in Russia, mobile operator Megafon toldReuters today.

Under the judge’s ruling, Meta is effectively banned from opening offices or doing business in Russia, according to Russian state media agency TASS. But Russian citizens won’t be accused of extremism for merely using any of Meta’s platforms or services (that is, if they can access them). Many Russians have downloaded VPNs in recent weeks to access many of the Western-owned tech platforms banned by their government.

"The use of Meta's products by individuals and legal entities should not be considered as participation in extremist activities," a spokesman for the prosecutor's office told TASS.

But even those able to access Facebook or Instagram still face limits on free speech. A new Russian law criminalizes the spread of “fake news” or public statements that are critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Thousands of Russians have been arrested, fired from jobs or expelled from school for criticizing Russia’s activities in Ukraine, reported NPR.

Despite Whatsapp being spared, future sparring between Russia and Western tech companies could make it harder for Russians to buy new devices or access services. Samsung, Microsoft, Apple, LG and others have banned device sales in Russia. 

MacRumors recently reported that Russian users can no longer access the App Store or pay for any of Apple’s services, which would include iCloud. Google Play has also paused all billing in Russia, although users can still use free apps. Whatsapp offers encrypted backups, but users will need an iCloud or Google Drive account. 

A judge on Brazil's Supreme Court has reversed a ban on Telegram, two days after blocking the messaging app for ignoring orders. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said the company missed the court's emails.

"We complied with an earlier court decision in late February and responded with a suggestion to send future takedown requests to a dedicated email address," Durov wrote on Telegram on Friday. "Unfortunately, our response must have been lost, because the Court used the old general-purpose email address in further attempts to reach us. As a result, we missed its decision in early March that contained a follow-up takedown request. Luckily, we have now found and processed it, delivering another report to the Court today."

Durov added that Telegram will appoint a representative in Brazil and set up a framework so it can address requests more promptly. According to The New York Times, Telegram complied with the court's demands by taking down classified information posted on President Jair Bolsonaro's channel and deleting the accounts of a Bolsonaro supporter who was allegedly spreading misinformation. The court then reversed the ban.

Telegram reacted so swiftly that the ban (which was imposed by a judge who is running multiple investigations into Bolsonaro and his allies for spreading misinformation) was never actually in effect. The court order gave Apple, Google, ISPs and phone providers five days to block the app.

Durov and his team made some other changes to the app in Brazil in the hope of avoiding another ban. Officials are said to be concerned about misinformation in the lead up to the general election in October. As such, Telegram will start promoting verified information and labeling posts containing falsehoods.

It will also monitor the 100 most popular channels in the country. Telegram says those account for 95 percent of views of public posts. The company has typically taken a hands-off approach to content moderation. The far-right Bolsonaro has used it as a means of communication with his 1.2 million followers after the likes of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube took a firmer stance against misinformation.

Brazil has become a key market for Telegram. According to data from Sensor Tower, Brazilians have installed Telegram more than 84 million times. Between January 1st and March 17th (the day before the court issued the ban), Brazilian iOS and Android users downloaded the app an estimated 4.9 million times.

A new lawsuit against Google accuses the company of fostering a "racially biased corporate culture" that offers Black employees lower pay and fewer opportunities to advance than their white counterparts, reports Reuters. Filed on Friday with a federal court in San Jose, California, the complaint alleges the company subjected former diversity recruiter April Curley and other current and former Black employees to a hostile work environment.

In 2014, Google hired Curley to design a program to connect the company with Black colleges. Shortly afterward, she claims she was subjected to denigrating comments from her managers, who allegedly stereotyped her as an "angry" black woman while passing her over for promotions.

"While Google claims that they were looking to increase diversity, they were actually undervaluing, underpaying and mistreating their Black employees," Curley's lawyer told Reuters. The complaint notes Black people make up only 4.4 percent of employees at Google and approximately 3 percent of its leadership.

We've reached out to Google for comment.

Curley is not the first person to accuse Google of fostering a work environment hostile to Black employees and other people of color. In the aftermath of Timnit Gebru's controversial exit from the company, Alex Hanna, a former employee with the tech giant's Ethical AI research group, said she decided to leave Google after becoming tired of its structural deficiencies. "In a word, tech has a whiteness problem," Hanna wrote on Medium at the time. "Google is not just a tech organization. Google is a white tech organization."

On Friday, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia threw out a complaint that Attorney General Karl Racine had filed against Amazon accusing the retailer of anticompetitive behavior, according to The Wall Street Journal. Last June, Racine’s office alleged that Amazon had used a variety of contract provisions to prevent third-party sellers from offering their wares for less elsewhere.

“We believe that the Superior Court got this wrong, and its oral ruling did not seem to consider the detailed allegations in the complaint, the full scope of the anticompetitive agreements, the extensive briefing and a recent decision of a federal court to allow a nearly identical lawsuit to move forward,” a spokesperson for the attorney general told the outlet.

At the center of Racine’s suit was Amazon’s Fair Pricing Policy. In 2019, amid antitrust scrutiny, the company stopped telling third-party sellers they couldn’t offer their wares at lower prices on competing marketplaces. The complaint alleged that Amazon added a near-identical clause under its Fair Pricing Policy. The suit said that those guidelines allow the company to impose sanctions on merchants that sell their products for less money elsewhere.

When Racine's office first filed its complaint, Amazon argued that many retailers employ pricing restrictions in their contracts. “The DC Attorney General has it exactly backwards — sellers set their own prices for the products they offer in our store," a spokesperson for the company told Engadget at the time. “Amazon takes pride in the fact that we offer low prices across the broadest selection, and like any store we reserve the right not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively. The relief the AG seeks would force Amazon to feature higher prices to customers, oddly going against core objectives of antitrust law.”

Racine’s office said it was weighing whether to appeal the ruling. “We are considering our legal options and we’ll continue fighting to develop reasoned antitrust jurisprudence in our local courts and to hold Amazon accountable for using its concentrated power to unfairly tilt the playing field in its favor,” it told The Journal.

Amazon is facing a lawsuit filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which is seeking the reinstatement of an employee it believes was filed in retaliation. Gerald Bryson, who worked at the e-commerce giant's JFK8 facility on Staten Island, was fired in the early days of the pandemic after he helped lead protests over safety concerns involving the company's COVID-19 protocols. 

Bryson fired an unfair labor practice suit back in 2020, but the case has been stuck in the agency's administrative court process. Now, according to The New York Times, the NLRB is asking a federal judge to make immediate changes before the facility holds a union election by the end of March and considering Bryson's involvement in organizing. 

Amazon denied that Bryson's firing was retaliatory back in 2020, explaining that he was fired for violating its policy against vulgar and harassing language. The company said Bryson bullied and intimidated a female associate "in a racially and sexually charged way" in a confrontation during the protest. However, a video recording cited by the NLRB in a recent filing (PDF) shows that while Bryson did indeed use foul language during the confrontation, the female employee also used foul language and a racial slur against him. Bryson, a Black man who helped lead the protest, was fired, while the white female employee who told him to stop protesting and go home, got a first warning.

The NLRB has accused Amazon of applying its policies against him in retaliation for the role he played in the protest. It argued that if the judge doesn't reinstate Bryson, workers "will inevitably conclude that the board cannot effectively protect their rights." NLRB director Kathy Drew King said in a statement:

"No matter how large the employer, it is important for workers to know their rights — particularly during a union election — and that the N.L.R.B. will vociferously defend them."

The JFK8 facility will hold a union vote in person between March 25th and March 30th. It's been a long journey just to get there, with the Amazon Labor Union failing to gather enough signatures to proceed with an election the first time around. The group reached union vote threshold in its second attempt, and although Amazon was skeptical that there were a "sufficient number of legitimate signatures," the election will take place as the NLRB had decided.

In addition to seeking Bryson's reinstatement, the NLRB also wants Amazon to post notices of workers' rights at the facility and to read those rights out loud at mandatory employee meetings.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission has fined Meta €17 million ($18.6 million) over 12 data breaches. It said the company violated several articles of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by failing "to have in place appropriate technical and organizational measures which would enable it to readily demonstrate the security measures that it implemented in practice to protect EU users' data."

The DPC received the data breach notifications from Meta between June and December 2018. Before announcing the fine, it consulted with other European authorities under GDPR guidelines, as the investigation was related to “cross-border” processing.

“This fine is about record keeping practices from 2018 that we have since updated, not a failure to protect people's information," a Meta spokesperson told Engadget. "We take our obligations under the GDPR seriously, and will carefully consider this decision as our processes continue to evolve.”

The fine is a drop in the ocean for Meta, which raked in $32.6 billion in ad revenue last quarter alone. The penalty pales in comparison with a $267 million fine the DPC imposed last year after it determined Meta app WhatsApp failed to comply with GDPR transparency rules. The regulator has investigated Meta over other data-related issues.