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BOSTON — A Massachusetts federal judge on Dec. 12 gave final approval to a claims-made class settlement over proton beam therapy (PBT or PBRT) that is capped at $6.75 million but at last report would result in distributions of less than $1.65 million because just 22 claims were submitted; in a different order issued the same day, the judge granted a separate $2 million for class counsel.
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in California on Dec. 12 preliminarily certified a class of consumers who accuse Live Nation Entertainment Inc. and Ticketmaster LLC, two companies that are now merged, of engaging in anticompetitive practices.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 15 denied a certiorari petition in which insurers and health plan administrators challenged a Nevada Supreme Court ruling that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act does not preempt state law claims concerning out-of-network (OON) care, which they argued conflicts with the conclusion of “[e]very federal appellate court to have considered the issue.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Dec. 12 affirmed a series of inter partes review (IPR) findings of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB); the panel held that substantial evidence supported PTAB’s findings that all challenged claims in patents describing radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies in various systems are unpatentable as obvious.
LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge on Dec. 12 ordered plaintiffs’ attorneys to pay $13,000 for filing “AI-tainted” briefs in the court and denied their motion to withdraw and amend those briefs and in separate orders refused to reconsider the enforceability of OnlyFans’ forum selection clause and dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims against OnlyFans’ owners and content creators’ agencies for deceptively marketing “chats” to subscribers.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 15 granted a farmer’s petition for a writ of certiorari concerning attorney fees that was not opposed by the respondents, the secretary of Agriculture and the Farm Service Agency administrator (together, USDA) and remanded the case to the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals for further consideration in light of a February prevailing party high court ruling.
SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Dec. 11 affirmed in part a lower court’s ruling finding Apple in contempt of a court-ordered injunction to enjoin Apple Inc. from certain anticompetitive practices on its App Store but reversed in part civil contempt sanctions regarding restrictions on Apple’s ability to impose any commissions on purchases outside an app in an antitrust dispute with Epic Games Inc., finding that the lower court did not err in finding Apple in contempt.
SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge said “old gambling provisions” need to be “clean[ed] up” but nonetheless found that they apply to “Robux,” the digital in-game currency used in the game Roblox, in an order denying a Robux-gambling website creator’s motion to dismiss claims brought against him by the parents on behalf of children “who gambled away their Robux on RBLXWild.”
SAN FRANCISCO — A divided Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel upheld a trial court’s dismissal of a consumer’s putative class complaint alleging that potato chips’ “Air Fried” labeling is deceptive when the chips are only finished in an air fryer rather than fully cooked in an air fryer as the consumer failed “to plausibly allege that a reasonable consumer would be deceived into believing that the chips are not deep fried in oil.”
NEW YORK — The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower federal court’s judgment in favor of insurers in their lawsuit disputing coverage for underlying actions arising from their firearm manufacturer insured’s alleged sales of “ghost gun” parts and kits brought by New York state and two cities against their firearm manufacturer insured, holding that the underlying claims fail to allege an “accident” to trigger coverage.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s (TTAB) decision to cancel a sports-based nonprofit organization’s trademarks containing the phrase “more than an athlete,” agreeing that a LeBron James-founded company had shown that it acquired common-law rights to a similar phrase earlier than the nonprofit’s registration.