Qualcomm has filed confidential complaints with antitrust regulators in the US, Europe, and South Korea, accusing Arm Holdings of leveraging its dominance to suppress competition in chip design. The filings, submitted to the US FTC European Commission and Korea Fair Trade Commission, alleged that Arm is restricting access to critical technologies and altering licensing terms to favor its own chip ventures, Bloomberg reported. Arm swiftly denied the claims, claimining that this is a distraction from a broader commercial dispute. "Arm remains focused on enhancing innovation, promoting competition, and respecting contractual rights and obligations," a company spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "Any allegation of anti-competitive conduct is nothing more than a desperate attempt by Qualcomm to detract from the merits and expand the parties' ongoing commercial dispute for its own competitive benefit. Arm is confident that it will ultimately prevail in this dispute."

Qualcomm's filings argue that Arm is abandoning its longstanding open licensing model, which enabled a global ecosystem of chipmakers and software developers. Instead, the company claims Arm is prioritizing its compute subsystems (CSS)—pre-packaged chip designs for client devices and data centers—by limiting rivals' ability to license core technologies. Qualcomm also alleges Arm is withholding IP and violating agreements, particularly for clients developing custom silicon based on CSS designs. The complaints follow a recent legal victory for Qualcomm in a Delaware court, where a judge ruled the company did not breach licensing deals by acquiring chip startup Nuvia and using its IP in Snapdragon X processors for PCs. Arm, which plans to appeal the decision, insists Qualcomm's regulatory push is an escalation of the same dispute. According to Bloomberg's sources, Qualcomm's EU complaint—filed before the December court ruling—warned that Arm's post-2024 licensing changes would force chipmakers to obtain direct architecture licenses to use CSS designs, which could marginalize competitors. Arm confirmed it is preparing a formal response to the EU filing, while Qualcomm has reportedly engaged regulators in Washington and Seoul on similar concerns.

According to the original report from Bloomberg, the Federal Trade Commission has initiated a comprehensive antitrust investigation into Microsoft Corporation, incorporating about a year of conducted informal interviews with Microsoft's competitors about its business practices. The probe encompasses Microsoft's cloud computing services, software licensing practices, cybersecurity offerings, and AI products. The investigation has now culminated in an extensive information request spanning hundreds of pages. FTC chair Lina Khan has authorized this demand for documents, signaling a serious escalation in the agency's oversight of the company. A key focus of the investigation is Microsoft's practice of bundling its popular Office productivity suite and security software with its cloud services.

Critics, including companies like Slack and Zoom, argue that Microsoft's strategy of including Teams video-conferencing software free with Word and Excel creates an unfair competitive advantage. The probe has gained momentum following several cybersecurity incidents involving Microsoft's products. As a major government contractor providing billions in software and cloud services to US agencies, including the Defense Department, Microsoft's security practices have drawn particular attention. The government's Cyber Safety Review Board recently concluded that Microsoft's security culture "requires an overhaul" given the company's role in the technology infrastructure ecosystem. This investigation makes Microsoft the fifth major tech company to face antitrust scrutiny in recent years, joining Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Google. It also represents a return after 25 years to regulatory challenges for Microsoft, which faced a similar antitrust lawsuit in the late 1990s over its Windows operating system and browser bundling practices.

The United States Supreme Court is about to decide on two cases brought by NVIDIA and Meta (Facebook) to avoid legal action against them for fraud on securities. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear NVIDIA's arguments on November 13 regarding the dismissal attempt of the securities class action lawsuit. Swedish investment firm E. Ohman J:or Fonder AB claims NVIDIA misled investors in 2017-2018 by understating its revenue dependency on cryptocurrency mining. NVIDIA's stand lies in the plaintiff's failure to meet the criteria established by the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Earlier this year, NVIDIA settled with the U.S. regulatory authority to pay $5.5 million to settle charges about the poor reporting of crypto mining's impact on its gaming segment.

The Supreme Court is also set to adjudicate the case brought by Facebook to dismiss the securities lawsuit where investors led by Amalgamated Bank accused the company of deceiving them by not revealing a 2015 data breach that involved Cambridge Analytica and which, in turn, affected more than 30 million users. The case came to the fore after Facebook's stock tanked in the light of reports about Cambridge Analytica's misuse of user data during the 2016 Trump campaign. Facebook maintains it wasn't obliged to disclose past breaches in risk statements, as these are supposedly forward-looking. The company had previously paid $100 million in penalty to the SEC and $5 billion to the FTC over the same issue. Recently, three Supreme Court decisions in June had eroded federal regulators, namely the SEC which is the principal regulator of securities fraud, and appear to bring more limitations to the power of private plaintiffs to be able to enforce federal rules set out for corporate misconduct.

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken action against three prominent PC companies, ASRock, Zotac, and GIGABYTE, for their unlawful warranty practices. The FTC has issued stern warnings, urging these companies to immediately cease their actions that have been found to be in violation of consumer protection laws. The trio has been engaging in practices that unfairly restrict consumers' ability to repair or modify their own devices with the "warranty void if removed" stickers. The FTC has made it clear that these companies cannot void warranties or deny service simply because a consumer has opened or repaired their product. "Consumers have a right to repair their own products, and companies shouldn't make that harder by putting up illegal barriers," said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, adding that "Manufacturers who try to circumvent the law will face the consequences."

The FTC's investigation revealed that these PC companies have been including deceptive warranty terms that claim consumers will void their warranties if they open or modify their devices. However, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA), a federal law, prohibits such practices unless the company can demonstrate that the consumer's actions directly caused the need for repair. The FTC has ordered the companies to stop these unlawful warranty practices immediately and to clearly inform consumers of their right to repair their devices without voiding the warranty. All three manufacturers are given a 30-day period to update their promotional and warranty information on their websites to indicate the updated information. Failure to comply with the FTC's directives could result in significant fines and further legal action.

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken legal action against software giant Adobe and two of its top executives for allegedly deceiving consumers about the actual costs of its popular subscription services and deliberately obstructing cancellations. In a federal court complaint filed by the Department of Justice at the FTC's request, the commission accuses Adobe of obscuring hefty early termination fees and making it excessively difficult for customers to cancel their subscriptions. The complaint alleges that when signing up for subscriptions on Adobe's website, the company steers consumers toward the "annual paid monthly" option, pre-selecting it as the default while burying details about the 50% early termination fee for canceling within the first year. Customers have lodged numerous complaints, saying they were unaware the plan committed them for a full year.

According to the FTC, even when customers did attempt to cancel, Adobe forced them to navigate a bureaucratic maze of web pages, unhelpful customer service reps, dropped calls, and transfers. Some customers who thought they had successfully canceled continued to be charged. Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, noted, "Adobe trapped customers into year-long subscriptions through hidden early termination fees and numerous cancellation hurdles." The complaint charges that these deceptive "dark patterns" violate the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act. It names Adobe's President of Digital Media, David Wadhwani, and Vice President Maninder Sawhney as co-defendants for their oversight roles in these shady business practices.

The Federal Trade Commission announced today that it issued orders to five companies requiring them to provide information regarding recent investments and partnerships involving generative AI companies and major cloud service providers. The agency's 6(b) inquiry will scrutinize corporate partnerships and investments with AI providers to build a better internal understanding of these relationships and their impact on the competitive landscape. The compulsory orders were sent to Alphabet, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., Anthropic PBC, Microsoft Corp., and OpenAI, Inc.

"History shows that new technologies can create new markets and healthy competition. As companies race to develop and monetize AI, we must guard against tactics that foreclose this opportunity, "said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. "Our study will shed light on whether investments and partnerships pursued by dominant companies risk distorting innovation and undermining fair competition."

NVIDIA today formally launched the China-specific GeForce RTX 4090D graphics card for gaming and creator applications, after it was banned this October by the United States Federal Trade Commission from exporting the RTX 4090 (among other AI GPUs) to China. The RTX 4090D comes with a reduced AI inference performance than the RTX 4090 to comply with the US-FTC limits, and measures are put in place to prevent end-users from modifying it into a regular RTX 4090. Besides firmware and driver-level performance limiters, the card gets a completely different ASIC code, a different device ID (which prevents BIOS transplants from the RTX 4090); and a different core-configuration of the 5 nm "AD102" silicon itself.

The "AD102" silicon physically has 72 TPCs (144 SM), from which NVIDIA carved out the original RTX 4090 by enabling 64 TPCs (128 SM). The new RTX 4090D only gets 57 TPCs (114 SM), which reduces the counts of the CUDA cores, Tensor cores, and RT cores. While the original RTX 4090 has 16,384 CUDA cores, 512 Tensor cores, and 128 RT cores; the new RTX 4090D is configured with 14,592 CUDA cores, 456 Tensor cores, and 114 RT cores. The GPU clocks are the same, both boost up to 2.52 GHz, although the power limits are reduced, with the TGP lowered by 25 W. The memory sub-system appears untouched. We are also hearing that overclocking of the RTX 4090D will be limited, with lower slider limits—all to prevent end-users from regaining AI inference performance levels comparable to an RTX 4090. NVIDIA is pricing the RTX 4090D at a baseline price of RMB ¥12,999 ($1,840), which was the launch price of the original RTX 4090 in China, before it was scalped out of existence there.

NVIDIA this October was barred by the US Federal Trade Commission from selling the GeForce RTX 4090 in the Chinese domestic market. The company scampered to create a China-specific variant of the RTX 4090 that would comply with the FTC's limits on the AI inference performance, while mostly being as fast as the regular RTX 4090 at gaming. The resulting product is the RTX 4090D. This card has significantly lower AI inference performance, probably due to a lower Tensor core count as VideoCardz reports, or a firmware based performance limiter similar to LHR (lite hashrate) GPUs during the peak of the crypto-scalping GPU shortage. This card goes on sale today. To prevent modding of this GPU back to a regular RTX 4090, it probably comes with a different device ID, and other barriers that prevent video BIOS from regular RTX 4090 from being transplanted over; and overclocking of the GPU is disabled beyond the maximum boost frequency advertised. The TGP has been lowered to 425 W, too.

Microsoft is closing in on its proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard—the company is celebrating another victory, following the conclusion of a crucial court case against the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Both parties were recently engaged in five days of arguments and deliberation—yesterday Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley's final ruling stated: Microsoft's acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision's content to several cloud gaming services."

The lady justice continued: "This Court's responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted—perhaps even terminated—pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED."

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an injunction earlier this week, in a renewed effort to temporarily block Microsoft's $69 billion bid for full ownership of the Activision Blizzard group. A judge has today granted the regulatory body's request. The court has issued a temporary restraining order—in which it states the legal measure "is necessary to maintain the status quo while the complaint is pending." The FTC proposes that the acquisition has the potential to "substantially lessen competition" within North America's gaming sector. Microsoft and Activision are required to attend a two-day hearing—scheduled for 22 June in San Francisco, California.

The FTC had previously penciled in an August 2 session with an internal administrative judge, following the expiration of Microsoft's proposed deadline (July 18) for the merger. A company spokesperson (commenting to Eurogamer) expressed that leadership was happy about the FTC's decision to bring proceedings forward in time: "Accelerating the legal process in the US will ultimately bring more choice and competition to the gaming market. A temporary restraining order makes sense until we can receive a decision from the Court, which is moving swiftly." The legal document outlines terms including the prevention of "any of their officers, directors, domestic or foreign agents, divisions, subsidiaries, affiliates, partnerships, or joint ventures from closing or consummating, directly or indirectly, the proposed transaction or a substantially similar transaction."

At Xbox, we have the fundamental commitment to provide all players with a safe and secure experience on our platform - and this is especially true for our youngest players. We frequently iterate on our safety measures, in collaboration and with feedback from the community, regulators and partners. We recently entered into a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to update our account creation process and resolve a data retention glitch found in our system. Regrettably, we did not meet customer expectations and are committed to complying with the order to continue improving upon our safety measures. We believe that we can and should do more, and we'll remain steadfast in our commitment to safety, privacy, and security for our community.

Our two decades of safety experience has taught us that all players want, and need, safety and privacy protections. Since 2005, when we launched the first console that could connect players online, we've continued to invest in tools and technologies to protect our community. That work evolved into a multifaceted safety strategy. Our suite of safety, privacy and security measures are designed to respect player privacy and safety, and empower players, as well as parents and caregivers, to have control over their gaming experiences.

Fortnite maker, Epic Games, has on Monday reached a settlement in court in an investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to pay a total of 520 million US Dollars in fines. This fine is because Epic deployed shady tactics of manipulating children into purchasing Fortnite V-bucks, skins, etc., without proper consent forms and purchase order confirmations. Even with millions of complaints from parents, Epic decided to proceed with its tactics and used dark patterns that deceived the original intent. Thus, the FTC has made a case that this violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rule, and Epic Games will have to pay the fine.

The fine is consists of two separate causes. The $275 million monetary penalty for violating the COPPA Rule—the largest penalty ever obtained for violating an FTC rule, and the $245 million to refund consumers for its dark patterns and billing practices. The refund fine is FTC's most considerable refund amount in a gaming case and its most significant administrative order in history. Epic said, "Over the past few years, we've been making changes to ensure our ecosystem meets the expectations of our players and regulators, which we hope will be a helpful guide for others in our industry. " The official statement is far longer, and you can read about it here.

The Federal Trade Commission is seeking to block technology giant Microsoft Corp. from acquiring leading video game developer Activision Blizzard, Inc. and its blockbuster gaming franchises such as Call of Duty, alleging that the $69 billion deal, Microsoft's largest ever and the largest ever in the video gaming industry, would enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business.

In a complaint issued today, the FTC pointed to Microsoft's record of acquiring and using valuable gaming content to suppress competition from rival consoles, including its acquisition of ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda Softworks (a well-known game developer). Microsoft decided to make several of Bethesda's titles including Starfield and Redfall Microsoft exclusives despite assurances it had given to European antitrust authorities that it had no incentive to withhold games from rival consoles.

EU antitrust regulators have paused their probe into NVIDIA's proposed $40 billion acquisition of ARM as they await further information. This takeover which would be the largest chip merger in history is now "highly unlikely" according to analysts as regulators from the FTC in the US are suing to block the deal. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is also undergoing an in-depth investigation to discover potential national security risks and competition concerns. These competition concerns are shared by the FTC who state that the acquisition would stifle innovation in next-generation technologies and would distort Arm's incentives to benefit NVIDIA by undermining rivals. NVIDIA has originally hoped to complete the deal within 2 years however this timeline is now unachievable as noted by CEO Jensen Huang in August.

The Federal Trade Commission today sued to block U.S. chip supplier Nvidia Corp.'s $40 billion acquisition of U.K. chip design provider Arm Ltd. Semiconductor chips power the computers and technologies that are essential to our modern economy and society. The proposed vertical deal would give one of the largest chip companies control over the computing technology and designs that rival firms rely on to develop their own competing chips. The FTC's complaint alleges that the combined firm would have the means and incentive to stifle innovative next-generation technologies, including those used to run datacenters and driver-assistance systems in cars.

"The FTC is suing to block the largest semiconductor chip merger in history to prevent a chip conglomerate from stifling the innovation pipeline for next-generation technologies," said FTC Bureau of Competition Director Holly Vedova. "Tomorrow's technologies depend on preserving today's competitive, cutting-edge chip markets. This proposed deal would distort Arm's incentives in chip markets and allow the combined firm to unfairly undermine Nvidia's rivals. The FTC's lawsuit should send a strong signal that we will act aggressively to protect our critical infrastructure markets from illegal vertical mergers that have far-reaching and damaging effects on future innovations."

We've been covering the loot box controversy for a while on TechPowerUp now. Independently of which side of the fence you're on - that loot boxes are akin to gambling and thus unethical in some of their implementations, or just cold to the entire issue - it's likely good news for everyone that these so-called "surprise mechanics", as they've been called, will now see their odds being disclosed by console makers and publishers.

This has been a long time coming for sure: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is looking to launch an investigation into the practice of introducing loot boxes in video games. The issue has already been brought up numerous times in other countries around the globe (Belgium and the Netherlands being the most prominent ones against its implementation). Only now will the FTC investigate openly into this, though, following an official request by Senator Maggie Hassan during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation subcommittee hearing.

Remember that time where the FTC announced they were cracking down on illegal, predatory warranty conditions? You know, such as those "warranty void if removed" stickers that don't really have any legal base towards their implementation - and eventual refusal of an actual warranty claim? Well, the gong has now sounded, and it will reverberate some 30 times: the amount of days the FTC has given companies to cease and desist on putting those stickers in newly shipped products.

The Federal Trade Commission staff has sent warning letters to six major companies that market and sell automobiles, cellular devices, and video gaming systems in the United States.

The letters warn that FTC staff has concerns about the companies' statements that consumers must use specified parts or service providers to keep their warranties intact. Unless warrantors provide the parts or services for free or receive a waiver from the FTC, such statements generally are prohibited by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, a law that governs consumer product warranties. Similarly, such statements may be deceptive under the FTC Act.