An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Sam Bankman-Fried took the stand in his criminal trial today in an attempt to avoid decades in prison for alleged fraud at cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its affiliate Alameda Research. [...] Some of the alleged fraud relates to how Alameda borrowed money from FTX. In testimony today, "Bankman-Fried said he believed that under FTX's terms of service, sister firm Alameda was allowed in many circumstances to borrow funds from the exchange," the WSJ wrote. Bankman-Fried reportedly said the terms of service were written by FTX lawyers and that he only "skimmed" certain parts. "I read parts in depth. Parts I skimmed over," Bankman-Fried reportedly said after [U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan] asked if he read the entire terms of service document.

Sassoon asked Bankman-Fried if he had "any conversations with lawyers about Alameda spending customer money that was deposited into FTX bank accounts," according to Bloomberg's live coverage. "I don't recall any conversations that were contemporaneous and phrased that way," Bankman-Fried answered. "I had so many conversations with lawyers later when we were trying to reconcile things in November 2022," Bankman-Fried also said. "There were conversations around Alameda being used as a payment processor, a payment agent for FTX. I frankly don't recall conversations with lawyers or otherwise about the usage of the funds or the North Dimension accounts." North Dimension was an Alameda subsidiary. The Securities and Exchange Commission has alleged that "Bankman-Fried directed FTX to have customers send funds to North Dimension in an effort to hide the fact that the funds were being sent to an account controlled by Alameda." [...]

In an overview of the alleged crimes, the indictment said Bankman-Fried "misappropriated and embezzled FTX customer deposits and used billions of dollars in stolen funds... to enrich himself; to support the operations of FTX; to fund speculative venture investments; to help fund over a hundred million dollars in campaign contributions to Democrats and Republicans to seek to influence cryptocurrency regulation; and to pay for Alameda's operating costs." He was also accused of making "false and fraudulent statements and representations to FTX's investors and Alameda's lenders." SBF's legal team decided that he would take the stand in his own defense -- a risky decision by legal observers as he will have to face cross-examination from federal prosecutors. In a rather unusual move, Judge Kaplan sent the jury home for a day to conduct a hearing on whether certain parts of Bankman-Fried's testimony are admissible.

During his testimony, Bankman-Fried discussed various aspects of the case, including FTX's terms of service, loans from Alameda to him and other executives, a hack into FTX, and his use of the encrypted messaging service Signal. Live paywall-free updates of the trial are available here.

SonicSpike shares a report from Politico: An agency set up under Donald Trump to protect elections and key U.S. infrastructure from foreign hackers is now fighting off increasingly intense threats from hard-right Republicans who argue it's gone too far and are looking for ways to rein it in. These lawmakers insist work by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to combat online disinformation during elections singles out conservative voices and infringes upon free speech rights -- an allegation the agency vehemently denies and the Biden administration is contesting in court. The accusations started in the wake of the 2020 election and are ramping up ahead of 2024, with lawmakers now calling for crippling cuts at the agency. "CISA has blatantly violated the First Amendment and colluded with Big Tech to censor the speech of ordinary Americans," Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which oversees CISA, said in a statement to POLITICO.

The fight over CISA underscores yet another way Trump's election fraud claims are reverberating into 2024. And though the hard right doesn't have enough votes to defund CISA today, the growing backlash against it has supporters worried that a hard-right faction could hobble the agency in the years ahead -- undermining its efforts not just to secure future elections, but also protect key U.S. and federal networks from major hacks. CISA had broad bipartisan support in Congress when lawmakers passed legislation creating the agency in 2018. At the ceremony where Trump signed it into law, he called it "very, very important legislation" to protect the U.S. against both nation-state hackers and cybercriminals. But when Chris Krebs, the then-head of CISA, debunked Trump's 2020 election fraud claims, the president fired him. And since the GOP assumed control of the House in 2022, like-minded Republicans have been ratcheting up their scrutiny of the agency. [...]

Conservatives now argue that activity has become a smokescreen for left-leaning government censorship. In Congress and within the courts, they contend that pressure from federal agencies like CISA led social media companies to limit the spread of information perceived as damaging to Joe Biden's campaign, such as stories relating to Hunter Biden. In a sign of trouble for an agency once boasting strong bipartisan support, 108 Republicans supported the failed push to cut CISA's budget last month -- a near majority within the conference. Backers of the budget cut included a swathe of increasingly influential hard-right lawmakers, like Jordan and James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee. Those with direct oversight over CISA also backed the vote, such as the chief of the Homeland Security Committee, Mark Green (R-Tenn.), and another panel member, August Pfluger (R-Texas).

Meta Platforms was sued by California and a group of more than two dozen states over claims that its social-media platforms Instagram and Facebook exploit youths for profit and feed them harmful content. From a report: The suit, filed in federal court in California, adds to growing scrutiny of social media giants over how they serve their youngest users.

404 Media (working with Court Watch) reports on a $30 Million cash-for-Bitcoin laundering ring operating in the heart of New York For years, a gang operating in New York allegedly offered a cash-for-Bitcoin service that generated at least $30 million, with men standing on street corners with plastic shopping bags full of money, drive-by pickups, and hundreds of thousands of dollars laid out on tables, according to court records.

The records provide rare insight into an often unseen part of the criminal underworld: how hackers and drug traffickers convert their Bitcoin into cash outside of the online Bitcoin exchanges that ordinary people use. Rather than turning to sites like Coinbase, which often collaborate with and provide records to law enforcement if required, some criminals use underground, in-real-life Bitcoin exchanges like this gang which are allegedly criminal entities in their own right.

In a long spanning investigation by the FBI involving a confidential source and undercover agents, one member of the crew said "that at least some of his clients made money by selling drugs, that his wealthiest clients were hackers, and that he had made approximately $30 million over the prior three years through the exchange of cash for virtual currency," the court records read.
Thanks to user Slash_Account_Dot for sharing the news.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The Supreme Court on Friday blocked in full a lower court ruling that would have curbed the Biden administration's ability to communicate with social media companies about contentious content on such issues as Covid-19. The decision in a short unsigned order (PDF) puts on hold a Louisiana-based judge's ruling in July that specific agencies and officials should be barred from meeting with companies to discuss whether certain content should be stifled. The Supreme Court also agreed to immediately take up the government's appeal, meaning it will hear arguments and issue a ruling on the merits in its current term, which runs until the end of June. Three conservative justices noted that they would have denied the application: Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

"At this time in the history of our country, what the court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news. That is most unfortunate," Alito wrote in a dissenting opinion. GOP attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, along with five social media users, filed the underlying lawsuit, alleging that U.S. government officials went too far in what they characterize as coercion of social media companies to address posts, especially those related to Covid-19. The individual plaintiffs include Covid-19 lockdown opponents and Jim Hoft, the owner of the right-wing website Gateway Pundit. They claim that the government's actions violated free speech protections under the Constitution's First Amendment.

echo123 shares a report from the Associated Press: Thousands of information technology workers contracting with U.S. companies have for years secretly sent millions of dollars of their wages to North Korea for use in its ballistic missile program, FBI and Department of Justice officials said. The Justice Department said Wednesday that IT workers dispatched and contracted by North Korea to work remotely with companies in St. Louis and elsewhere in the U.S. have been using false identities to get the jobs. The money they earned was funneled to the North Korean weapons program, FBI leaders said at a news conference in St. Louis.

Court documents allege that North Korea's government dispatched thousands of skilled IT workers to live primarily in China and Russia with the goal of deceiving businesses from the U.S. and elsewhere into hiring them as freelance remote employees. The workers used various techniques to make it look like they were working in the U.S., including paying Americans to use their home Wi-Fi connections, said Jay Greenberg, special agent in charge of the St. Louis FBI office. Greenberg said any company that hired freelance IT workers "more than likely" hired someone participating in the scheme. An FBI spokeswoman said Thursday that the North Koreans contracted with companies across the U.S. and in some other countries. "We can tell you that there are thousands of North Korea IT workers that are part of this," spokeswoman Rebecca Wu said. Federal authorities announced the seizure of $1.5 million and 17 domain names as part of the investigation, which is ongoing. FBI officials said the scheme is so prevalent that companies must be extra vigilant in verifying whom they are hiring, including requiring interviewees to at least be seen via video.

The IT workers generated millions of dollars a year in their wages to benefit North Korea's weapons programs. In some instances, the North Korean workers also infiltrated computer networks and stole information from the companies that hired them, the Justice Department said. They also maintained access for future hacking and extortion schemes, the agency said. Officials didn't name the companies that unknowingly hired North Korean workers, say when the practice began, or elaborate on how investigators became aware of it. But federal authorities have been aware of the scheme for some time.

Can you heat up a pan to 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit? That's the burning question at the center of this proposed class action lawsuit, which claims the advertising for SharkNinja's nonstick cookware violates the laws of physics and thermodynamics. From a report: While SharkNinja is the company best known for its Shark robovacs and Ninja kitchen gadget, this lawsuit takes issue with the Ninja NeverStick Premium Cookware collection, a line of pots and pans it advertises as having superior nonsticking and nonflaking qualities thanks to its manufacturing process.

Instead of making its pans at a measly 900-degree temperature that other brands use, SharkNinja says it heats up the cookware to a maximum of 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That process, according to SharkNinja, fuses "plasma ceramic particles" to the surface of the pan, "creating a super-hard, textured surface that interlocks with our exclusive coating for a superior bond." But Patricia Brown, the person who filed this lawsuit, isn't buying it. As cited in Brown's lawsuit, NASA recently said the "surface of the Sun is a blisteringly hot 10,340 degrees Fahrenheit," meaning SharkNinja's manufacturing process reaches about three times that temperature.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dropped claims against two Ripple Labs executives in its lawsuit alleging the blockchain company violated U.S. securities law, according to a court filing in New York on Thursday. The agency said in court papers it is dropping claims that Ripple Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen aided and abetted sales of the cryptocurrency XRP which a judge has found amounted to unregistered sales of securities.

In its December 2020 lawsuit, the SEC accused Ripple of illegally raising more than $1.3 billion in an unregistered securities offering by selling XRP. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan granted Ripple a partial win in the case in July, finding that sales of XRP on public exchanges were not unregistered securities offerings. Torres subsequently rejected a request by the SEC to appeal that ruling. She also ruled partly in the SEC's favor, saying the agency had shown the company's $728.9 million of XRP sales to hedge funds and other sophisticated buyers had violated the law.

Garlinghouse and Larsen, who have harshly criticized the SEC throughout the case, issued lengthy statements accusing the agency of a political agenda to, in Larsen's words, "suffocate crypto in America." "Instead of looking for the criminals stealing customer funds on offshore exchanges that were courting political favor, the SEC went after the good guys," Garlinghouse said, an apparent reference to Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of crypto exchange FTX. The agency said in its papers that the next step in the case is for both sides to present to the judge on what the appropriate penalty is for Ripple.

New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing three cryptocurrency companies -- Gemini, Genesis, and Digital Currency Group (DCG) -- over claims they misled investors, leading to the loss of over $1 billion. From a report: In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, James says their alleged fraudulent schemes affected over 230,000 investors. The lawsuit targets Gemini, the crypto exchange owned by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and its Earn program. The firm marketed Gemini Earn as a high-yield program that involved customers investing with Genesis Global Capital, which is owned by DCG. However, James alleges that Gemini knew investing with Genesis was risky and misled customers as a result.

Universal Music has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic, as the world's largest music group battles against chatbots that churn out its artists' lyrics. From a report: Universal and two other music companies allege that Anthropic scrapes their songs without permission and uses them to generate "identical or nearly identical copies of those lyrics" via Claude, its rival to ChatGPT. When Claude is asked for lyrics to the song "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor, for example, it responds with "a nearly word-for-word copy of those lyrics," Universal, Concord, and ABKCO said in a filing with a US court in Nashville, Tennessee.

"This copyrighted material is not free for the taking simply because it can be found on the Internet," the music companies said, while claiming that Anthropic had "never even attempted" to license their copyrighted work. The lawsuit comes as the music industry is grappling with the rise of AI technology that can produce "deepfake" songs that mimic the voices, lyrics, or sound of established musicians. The issue drew attention earlier this year after an AI-produced song that mimicked the voices of Drake and The Weeknd spread online.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Patent owner StreamScale won a $240 million jury verdict in Waco, Texas, federal court on Friday in a patent case against data-management software company Cloudera. The jury said (PDF) after a four-day trial that Cloudera infringed three StreamScale patents related to cloud-based data storage technology. Cloudera said in a statement that it intends to challenge the decision and that it would not impact the company's customers.

StreamScale attorney Jason Sheasby called the verdict a "referendum on the importance of small inventors and small businesses." StreamScale owns patents for inventor Michael Anderson's "accelerated erasure coding" technology, which the company's complaint called a "cornerstone" of modern data storage. It sued Santa Clara, California-based Cloudera in 2021 for allegedly infringing several of its patents.

The lawsuit accused Cloudera's CDH open source data-management platform of violating StreamScale's patent rights. Cloudera argued its software worked in a different way than StreamScale's inventions and said that the patents were invalid. StreamScale also accused other companies, including Intel, of infringing its patents in the 2021 lawsuit. Intel filed a separate lawsuit later that year arguing that StreamScale's allegations violated a non-disclosure agreement.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled today that evidence gleaned from a warrant for Google's search data could be used in the prosecution of a teen who was charged with murder for a fire that killed five people in the Denver area. From a report: As police scrambled to solve the source of the 2020 blaze, they asked Alphabet's Google to provide information about people who searched for the address of the house that went up in flames, using a controversial technique known as a keyword search warrant. After some initial objections, Google provided data that enabled detectives to zero in on five accounts, leading to the arrest of three suspects in the case.

Lawyers for one of the suspects, Gavin Seymour, who was found to have Googled the home's address 14 times in the days before the fire, argued that the keyword warrant constituted an illegal search and that any evidence from it should be suppressed. His motion is the first known challenge to the constitutionality of keyword search warrants. The case is ongoing. In its 74-page decision, the court found that law enforcement had acted in good faith when it obtained the warrant for the teen's search history. Still, it stressed that the findings were specific to the facts of the case, and it refrained from weighing in about the use of Google's search data more broadly.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Verge: Caltech has had some ups (winning $1.1 billion) and some downs (losing the $1.1 billion award and being ordered to a trial on damages) since suing Apple and Broadcom in 2016 over Wi-Fi patents. Reuters reported this week that Caltech is dropping its yearslong lawsuit against Apple and Broadcom, about two months after the companies came to a "potential settlement."

Caltech wrote in a filing with a US District Court in California that it would drop its claims "with prejudice," meaning it can't refile its case, and asked that Broadcom do so as well, stating later that Broadcom "does not oppose this request." Caltech also writes that it will dismiss its claims against Apple — again, "with prejudice."

The filing then says that Caltech "respectfully requests that all counterclaims asserted by Apple also be dismissed."

Yesterday America's Federal Trade Commission said it remained focused on its appeal opposing Microsoft's deal to buy Activision, reports Reuters.

Reuters notes that Microsoft and Activision closed their transaction Friday "after winning approval from Britain on condition that they sell the streaming rights to Activision's games to Ubisoft Entertainment." But the U.S. Federal Trade Commission "has also fought the deal, and has an argument scheduled before an appeals court on December 6. The agency said on Friday that it remained focused on that appeal." An FTC spokesperson had this comment for Reuters.

"The FTC continues to believe this deal is a threat to competition."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A thief who stole more than $470 million in cryptocurrency when FTX crashed is trying to cash it out while the exchange's founder is on trial. Sam Bankman-Fried's high-profile court case began last week. The former crypto mogul denies fraud. After lying dormant for nine months, experts say $20 million of the stolen stash is being laundered into traditional money every day. New analysis shows how the mystery thief is trying to hide their tracks. [...] On the day FTX collapsed, hundreds of millions of dollars of cryptocurrency controlled by the exchange were stolen by an unidentified thief that is believed to still have control of the funds. No one knows how the thief -- or thieves -- was able to get digital keys to FTX crypto wallets, but it is thought it was either an insider or a hacker who was able to steal the information. The criminal moved 9,500 Ethereum coins, then worth $15.5 million, from a wallet belonging to FTX, to a new wallet. Over the next few hours, hundreds of other cryptoassets were taken from the company's wallets, in transactions eventually totaling $477 million.

According to researchers from Elliptic, a cryptocurrency investigation firm, the thief lost more than $100 million in the weeks following the hack as some was frozen or lost in processing fees as they frantically moved the funds around to evade capture. But by December around $70 million was successfully sent to a cryptocurrency mixer -- a criminal service used to launder Bitcoin, making it difficult to trace. [...] Although mixers make it difficult to trace Bitcoin, Elliptic was able to follow a small amount of the funds -- $4 million -- that was sent to an exchange. The rest of the stolen FTX stash -- around $230 million -- remained untouched until 30 September -- the weekend before Mr Bankman-Fried's trial began. Nearly every day since then chunks worth millions have been sent to a mixer for laundering and then presumably cashing out. Elliptic has been able to trace $54 million of Bitcoin being sent to the Sinbad mixer after which the trail has gone cold for now. "Crypto launderers have been known to wait for years to move and cash out assets once public attention has dissipated, but in this case they have begun to move just as the world's attention is once again directed towards FTX and the events of November 2022," said Tom Robinson, Elliptic's co-founder.

Microsoft completed its $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard after a nearly two-year fight with global regulators threatened to scuttle the deal. From a report: The biggest-ever acquisition in the video game industry gives the maker of Xbox consoles a more formidable position against rivals, vaulting it from fifth to third place globally, behind Tencent Holdings and Sony Group. The acquisition is a stunning turnaround after Microsoft executives underestimated the magnitude and longevity of antitrust objections, forcing the software giant to seek a three-month extension of the deal's expiration period from Activision.

Microsoft was able to close after making alterations to its merger agreement to win over UK authorities. The US Federal Trade Commission, which lost an attempt to block the transaction in court, continues to pursue legal action in its own administrative hearing. That could still force the two companies to unwind the deal if the commission is successful. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority announced on Friday that it had approved the deal after accepting a restructuring plan involving selling some gaming rights to French publisher Ubisoft Entertainment SA. The regulator was concerned about preserving competition in the nascent market for games streamed via the cloud.

Ashley Belanger reports via Ars Technica: This month, more than three dozen victims allegedly terrorized by stalkers using Apple AirTags have joined a class-action lawsuit filed in a California court last December against Apple. They alleged in an amended complaint (PDF) that, partly due to Apple's negligence, AirTags have become "one of the most dangerous and frightening technologies employed by stalkers" because they can be easily, cheaply, and covertly used to determine "real-time location information to track victims." Since the lawsuit was initially filed in 2022, plaintiffs have alleged that there has been an "explosion of reporting" showing that AirTags are frequently being used for stalking, including a spike in international AirTags stalking cases and more than 150 police reports in the US as of April 2022. More recently, there were 19 AirTags stalking cases in one US metropolitan area -- Tulsa, Oklahoma -- alone, the complaint said.

This seeming escalation is concerning, plaintiffs say, because Apple allegedly has not done enough to mitigate harms, and AirTags stalking can lead to financial ruin, as victims bear significant costs like hiring mechanics to strip their cars to locate AirTags or repeatedly relocating their homes. AirTags stalking can also end in violence, including murder, plaintiffs alleged, and the problem is likely bigger than anyone knows, because stalking is historically underreported. [...] Many plaintiffs said they had no clue what AirTags were when they first discovered hidden AirTags were being used to monitor their moves. At the very least, plaintiffs want Apple to be responsible for raising awareness of how AirTags are used by stalkers -- not just to inform people who are at risk of stalking but also to ensure law enforcement is aware. Plaintiffs have alleged that Apple did not provide information to police that prevented them from accessing protective orders and pressing criminal charges. The complaint also suggested other remedies Apple could provide, like improving the consistency of AirTag alerts, which plaintiffs claimed only sometimes appeared on iPhones, so that users are always aware when an AirTag is nearby. "Apple continues to find itself in the position of reacting to the harms its product has unleashed, as opposed to prophylactically preventing those harms," the complaint said.

A technology specialist for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, Corbin Streett, is also quoted in the complaint, pointing out that Apple's threat model seemed to only consider risks of strangers using AirTags for unwanted stalking, not abusive partners. That's a problem since advocacy groups like the federally funded Stalking Prevention, Awareness, & Resource Center report (PDF) that the "vast majority of stalking victims are stalked by someone they know" and "intimate partner stalkers are the most likely stalkers to approach, threaten, and harm their victims." "I hope Apple keeps their learning hat on and works to figure out that piece of the puzzle," Streett said.

Google has agreed to stop advertising YouTube TV as "$600 less than cable" after losing an appeal of a previous ruling that went against the company. Google said it will "modify or cease the disputed advertising claim." From a report: The case was handled in the advertising industry's self-regulatory system, not in a court of law. The National Advertising Review Board (NARB) announced today that it rejected Google's appeal and recommended that the company discontinue the YouTube TV claim. YouTube TV launched in 2017 for $35 a month, but the base package is $72.99 after the latest price hike in March 2023. Google's "$600 less than cable" claim was challenged by Charter, which uses the brand name Spectrum and is the second-biggest cable company after Comcast. The National Advertising Division (NAD) previously ruled in Charter's favor but Google appealed the decision to the NARB in August.

"Charter contended the $600 figure was inaccurate, arguing that its Spectrum TV Select service in Los Angeles only cost around $219 a year more than Google's YouTube TV service," according to a MediaPost article in August. A Google ad claimed that YouTube TV provided $600 in "annual average savings" compared to cable as of January 2023. A disclosure on the ad said the price was for "new users only" and that the $600 annual savings was "based on a study by SmithGeiger of the published cost of comparable standalone cable in the top 50 Nielsen DMAs, including all fees, taxes, promotion pricing, DVR box rental and service fees, and a 2nd cable box."

Utah became the latest state Tuesday to file a lawsuit against TikTok, alleging the company is "baiting" children into addictive and unhealthy social media habits. From a report: TikTok lures children into hours of social media use, misrepresents the app's safety and deceptively portrays itself as independent of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, Utah claims in the lawsuit. "We will not stand by while these companies fail to take adequate, meaningful action to protect our children. We will prevail in holding social media companies accountable by any means necessary," Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit, which was filed in state court in Salt Lake City. Arkansas and Indiana have filed similar lawsuits while the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to decide whether state attempts to regulate social media platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok violate the Constitution.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A California judge has thrown out a $32.5 million verdict win for Sonos against Google after two of Sonos' patents were deemed unenforceable and invalid. As a result, Google has started to re-introduce software features it had removed due to Sonos' lawsuit. In a decision dated October 6, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said that Sonos had wrongfully linked its patent applications for multi-room audio technology to a 2006 application in order to make them appear older and claim that its inventions came before Google's products, as first reported by Reuters.

"Sonos filed the provisional application from which the patents in suit claim priority in 2006, but it did not file the applications for these patents and present the asserted claims for examination until 2019," the decision (PDF) reads. "By the time these patents issued in 2019 and 2020, the industry had already marched on and put the claimed invention into practice. In fact, in 2014, five years before Sonos filed the applications and presented the claims, accused infringer Google LLC shared with Sonos a plan for a product that would practice what would become the claimed invention."

The decision states that the two companies were exploring a potential collaboration, but that it never materialized. Alsup goes on to note that Google began introducing its own products that featured multi-room audio technology in 2015, and also that Sonos waited until 2019 to pursue claims on the invention. "This was not a case of an inventor leading the industry to something new," Alsup wrote. "This was a case of the industry leading with something new and, only then, an inventor coming out of the woodwork to say that he had come up with the idea first — wringing fresh claims to read on a competitor's products from an ancient application." "We recently made a change to speaker groups for Nest speakers, displays, and Chromecast where certain devices can only belong to one speaker group at a time in the Google Home app," the company wrote in a blog post. "A federal judge has found that two patents that Sonos accused our devices of infringing are invalid. In light of this legal decision we're happy to share that we will be rolling back this change."