DOJ Wants To Quash Apple's Look At Fed Phone-Buying

By Matthew Perlman

The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a New Jersey federal court to overrule an order in the government's monopolization case giving Apple a look at how the Pentagon, CIA, U.S. Department of State and other agencies purchase smartphones and smartwatches.

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5th Circ. Upholds NAR Exit From Membership Rules Case

By Nate Beck

The Fifth Circuit found a Texas real estate broker failed to show enough evidence in a third amended complaint to bring antitrust claims challenging rules from the National Association of Realtors that mandate trade group membership to gain access to home listings.

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9th Circ. Calls Foul On Judge's NCAA Five-Year Rule Injunction

By Tom Lotshaw

The NCAA's five-year eligibility limit may be a commercial rule subject to antitrust scrutiny, but a Nevada federal judge improperly blocked it to let a college baseball player keep playing with little evidence it constrained competition, the Ninth Circuit has said.

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Lilly Owes Nektar $1B If It Breached Rezpeg Deal, Jury Told

By Bonnie Eslinger

Nektar Therapeutics' damages expert told a California federal jury on Thursday that Eli Lilly & Co. could owe the biotechnology company nearly $1 billion if it finds that the pharmaceutical giant breached a license agreement to co-develop Nektar's autoimmune-disease drug Rezpeg.

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Deals Rumor Mill

TPG, Blue Owl, CVC Exploring Deals, And More Rumors

By Al Barbarino

Private equity firm TPG may be looking to sell Lyric, which could value the healthcare software company at $5 billion; asset manager Blue Owl Capital is exploring the launch of a real estate investment trust; and CVC Capital Partners could sell personal care company Arthea at a $2 billion valuation. 

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EU Beats Challenge To Block €1.6B Booking.com Buy

By Bryan Koenig

A European Union court refused to upend an EU decision blocking Booking.com's €1.63 billion ($1.89 billion) purchase of Swedish flight booking service eTraveli, rejecting Booking's assertions that the European Commission went against its own merger review guidelines.

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CMA Clears Welltower's $14B Care Home Deal

By Dawood Fakhir

The U.K.'s antitrust authority said Thursday that it has cleared Welltower Inc.'s $14 billion acquisition of several care homes in the U.K. after the U.S. real estate investment trust took steps earlier in September to address the regulator's concerns.

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Nielsen Tells 2nd Circ. Court Altered Terms Of Cumulus Order

By Nadia Dreid

Nielsen is headed back to the Second Circuit after a New York federal court changed the terms of a preliminary injunction that the appellate court had already upheld, the company said, requiring Nielsen to not only unbundle its national radio ratings data from its local offerings but also to provide that data on specific terms.

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Fox Must Produce Carriage Deals In Newsmax Antitrust Suit

By Carolina Bolado

Fox News has to produce its top carriage agreements with cable and streaming providers in Newsmax's antitrust suit accusing Fox of pressuring providers not to carry the rival right-leaning broadcaster, a Florida federal magistrate judge ruled Thursday.

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Clinical Trial Buyer Says Ex-Owner Breached $100M Deal

By Jarek Rutz

Surge ECN Holdings LLC and ECN Operating LLC have accused the former owner of a clinical trial research network of violating a five-year noncompete and other restrictions tied to a deal worth more than $100 million, alleging he diverted customers, recruited key physicians and used confidential information to build a competing business.

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Chinese Vape Co. Wants Price-Fixing MDL Tossed

By Jonathan Capriel

Downstream buyers of cannabis vape brand CCell parts are unable to show that an inherently illegal price-fixing and customer-allocation conspiracy existed between the Chinese manufacturer and four distributors, the companies argued in a dismissal bid, telling a California federal court that the multidistrict litigation complaint describes only "ordinary" business dealings.

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Thomson Reuters Says DOJ AI Stance Doesn't Back Ross

By Rae Ann Varona

Thomson Reuters told the Third Circuit Thursday in defunct legal tech startup Ross Intelligence's interlocutory appeal of a summary judgment ruling that it infringed Westlaw headnotes that a statement by the U.S. Department of Justice flagged by Ross does not support its fair-use defense.

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Citizens Says SoFi's Poaching 'Decimated' Conn. Mortgage Biz

By Isaac Monterose

Citizens Bank is suing SoFi Bank in Connecticut federal court, alleging its rival poached Citizens Bank employees, stole its trade secrets and "decimated Citizens' mortgage business" in Connecticut. 

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Biosimilars Boast Big Savings But Face IP Risks, Report Says

By Theresa Schliep

There are no biosimilar drugs in development for 90% of biologic products set to lose their patent exclusivity by 2034, according to a report released Thursday by the Association for Accessible Medicines, which warned that current patent policy threatens generic-drug development. 

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Series

Juggling And Unicycling Make Me A Better Lawyer

Because I juggle (sometimes with fire) and ride the unicycle, friends and family used to joke that I should join the circus, but I pursued the practice of law instead and learned that my hobbies benefit my profession in several important ways, says Morgan Eddy at Smith Currie.

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Senior Lawyers Survey: Tell Us About Your Career

How are senior lawyers adapting to evolving career paths and emerging technologies? Share your perspective in this five-minute survey.

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Engineering Co. Calls Atty-Ouster Bid Retaliatory In Wage Suit

By Benjamin Morse

An engineering company urged a Pennsylvania federal judge to reject a bid to remove its lawyer from a wage case, arguing the worker is retaliating because the company tried to disqualify one of his attorneys from a separate case.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Elias Law Group LLP and Stinson LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Missouri cannot use a newly drawn congressional map that favors Republicans in the midterms.

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In-House Atty Org. Says Rival Ripped Off Data For AI Tool

By Andrea Keckley

The Association of Corporate Counsel alleges in Delaware federal court that its competitor used the nonprofit's proprietary materials to train its artificial intelligence tool Lloyd and "brazenly promoted its Lloyd product by showing the public that ACC materials could be accessed via Lloyd."

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Greenberg Traurig, Eckert Seamans Hit By Data Breaches

By Ryan Boysen

Greenberg Traurig LLP and Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott LLC have publicly revealed that they've been hit by data breaches, adding to the dozens of cybersecurity incidents U.S. law firms have suffered this year.

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Legal Ops Duo Sees AI Driving Department Redesign

By Anna Scott Farrell

Connie Brenton and Jeff Franke consider themselves, and others in the field of legal operations, to be, fundamentally, entrepreneurs. Here, the pair sat down with Law360 Pulse to talk about the state of their field, why legal ops is still misunderstood, and their annual conference, Running Legal Like a Business, which took place this week in Las Vegas.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

AI is driving a significant gap between in-house legal departments' budgets and the cost of their workloads, according to a new study. Speaking of gaps, a new Law360 Pulse report on women in law found that men still make up 71% of law firm equity partners and 63% of nonequity partners. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.​

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Analysis

Midterm Wins Could Help Dems Probe Trump's BigLaw Deals

By Courtney Bublé

If the Democrats take back one or both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, a big item on their oversight agenda will be to step up ongoing investigations of the deals that nine major law firms cut with the Trump administration last year.

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Personal Injury Firm Beats Atty's Bid For 'Birth Justice' TM

By Adam Lidgett

A former associate at a personal injury and medical malpractice law firm can't register in her own name a trademark for birth-injury legal services that she helped develop before and during her employment with the firm, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has ruled.

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Trial Errors 'Crippled Goldstein's Defense,' 4th Circ. Hears

By Jeff Overley

Appellate luminary Tom Goldstein unveiled a sweeping and forceful critique aimed at erasing his felony fraud convictions, telling the Fourth Circuit that prosecutors were hell-bent on convicting him "no matter the facts or law," disregarded a star witness's "incompetence" and benefited from a trial judge's "inexplicable" rulings.

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Interview

ABA Cyber Task Force Co-Chair Eyes AI Education Boost

By Allison Grande

With the legal industry presenting a more and more enticing target for cyberattacks, it's becoming increasingly important for practitioners to know how to best protect clients' data and most effectively use emerging artificial intelligence tools — a task that the American Bar Association's Cybersecurity Legal Task Force is well positioned to assist with, its incoming co-chair recently told Law360.

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Afghan Woman Deported in 1st 'Alien Terrorist' Case

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

The Trump administration deported an Afghan woman accused of plotting an ISIS-inspired mass shooting in the first case before the previously dormant Alien Terrorist Removal Court.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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Attys Must Arbitrate $8 Oil To Fight $625K Sanction: 9th Circ.

By Jeff Overley

Class action lawyers slapped with six-figure sanctions for suing Walmart Inc. based on erroneous purchase information can't yet challenge the discipline, the Ninth Circuit ruled, suggesting they may first need to arbitrate grievances over an $8 bottle of avocado oil.

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Ex-Wash. Bench Officer Censured Over Explicit Texts, Emails

By Ben Adlin

The Washington State Commission on Judicial Conduct censured a former Okanogan County Superior Court commissioner Friday, finding that Robert Colbert violated the Code of Judicial Conduct by engaging in what a stipulated agreement describes as "unprofessional, inappropriate communications" with a court employee that involved "sexually explicit language."

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Brief

Colo. Governor Appoints Atty To Denver Court

By Rachel Konieczny

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis appointed Friday an attorney to the Denver District Court, filling the vacancy that will be created by a retirement on the bench.

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