Baker McKenzie Adds Alston & Bird Cybersecurity Atty In DC

By Jack Rodgers

Baker McKenzie has added a cybersecurity, data privacy and incident response partner from Alston & Bird LLP, who joins the team in Washington, D.C., at a time when cyberattacks and data breaches against companies and others are increasing.

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FDA Leaders Outline How AI Is Shaping The Agency's Work

By Dan McKay

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is using generative artificial intelligence to help redact records before public release, summarize documents and evaluate scientific literature, federal officials said in a recent conference.

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JAMS Launches Alternative Dispute Resolution Tech Group

By Matt Perez

Alternative dispute resolution provider JAMS announced Tuesday the launch of a technology industry group to address disputes regarding new innovations such as artificial intelligence, digital assets and biotechnology.

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3rd Circ. Says Financial Services Rule Thwarts Privacy Suit

By P.J. D'Annunzio

The Third Circuit declined to reinstate class claims made by a group of John Hancock customers from Illinois accusing Amazon Web Services Inc. and Pindrop Security Inc. of collecting consumers' voice data without their consent, ruling Tuesday that exemptions under Illinois and federal law applied.

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Bitcoin Depot Allowed Crypto Scam Via ATMs, Couple Says

By Zak Kostro

Bitcoin Depot systematically facilitated fraud involving cryptocurrency through its bitcoin ATM network, which targeted consumers who have lost thousands of dollars through the machines, according to a proposed class action in Idaho federal court brought by a couple who alleged they fell victim to such a scam.

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Brief

Tobacco Giant RJ Reynolds Sued Over Telemarketing Texts

By Abigail Harrison

Cigarette and e-cigarette giant R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc. was accused in North Carolina federal court of violating federal law by texting residential telephone numbers listed on the National Do Not Call Registry.

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Google, Meta Hit With Suits Over Use Of Voices For AI

By Adam Lidgett

A group of journalists and voice actors has hit Google, Meta, Microsoft, chipmaking giant Nvidia and speech synthesis software company ElevenLabs with proposed class actions in Illinois federal court accusing the companies of wrongly using the plaintiffs' voices to train their artificial intelligence models.

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7th Circ. Urged To Revive Hartford $4M Wire Fraud Fight

By Celeste Bott

An Illinois agency that administers financially distressed insurers' estates Tuesday urged the Seventh Circuit to revive its lawsuit seeking insurance coverage for a cyberattack during which its financial chief provided confidential login information to hackers, who used his email account to instruct employees to wire them nearly $7 million.

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Teen's Estate Says Grindr Suit Unfairly Sent To Arbitration

By Y. Peter Kang

The estate of a 16-year-old girl who was lured in by a 35-year-old man on the Grindr platform and tortured and murdered told a Florida federal judge to reconsider the court's decision to send the case to arbitration, saying developing case law says otherwise.

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House Dem Probes Retailers' Use Of Surveillance Pricing

By Allison Grande

The top Democrat on an influential U.S. House committee has begun to scrutinize corporate "surveillance pricing" practices, pushing Target, Walmart, Costco, Family Dollar, Whole Foods and 20 others Tuesday to explain whether and how they're using consumers' personal data to set individualized prices for certain products and services.

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Ex-Google Engineer's Bid To Nix Conviction Nears Partial Win

By Bonnie Eslinger

A California federal judge appeared open Tuesday to partly unwinding a jury's decision to convict a former Google engineer of trade secret theft and economic espionage, saying he's "somewhat skeptical" of the economic espionage charges since he doesn't see sufficient evidence the engineer intended to benefit China.

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Cigna Says HIPAA Doesn't Save Website Privacy Suit

By Matthew Santoni

A proposed group of Cigna health plan participants can't cite HIPAA to keep up their claims that the insurer improperly tracked their private information through its websites, since the privacy law doesn't cover the kind of information the company collected, the insurer told a Pennsylvania federal court.

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NYC China Police Station Case Is Overblown, Jury Hears

By Stewart Bishop

Counsel for a Chinese American man accused of running a secret police station in New York City for China's government told a Brooklyn federal jury Tuesday that his client is being railroaded for helping out his community.

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DOJ's FCA Data-Miner Focus Raises Compliance Stakes

A new U.S. Department of Justice initiative aims to help its Civil Division better vet False Claims Act suits brought by data-mining whistleblowers, signaling that data-driven qui tam enforcement is a priority and making it increasingly important for attorneys and companies to bolster compliance, documentation and internal data monitoring, say attorneys at Wiley.

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Legal Risks Rise As Construction-Site Drone Use Soars

Construction companies using drones face mounting legal risks as Federal Aviation Administration compliance requirements tighten, remote identification capabilities expand and proposed rules move toward organizational accountability, making it crucial to update contracts, schedules, safety protocols and data-governance practices now to avoid future liability, say attorneys at Cozen.

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Understanding The Legal Risks Of Fragile Supply Chains

To ensure supply chain resilience in times of crisis — such as the recent blockage of the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz — it is important for everyone involved in the chain to understand the distribution arrangements and laws applicable across jurisdictions, say lawyers at Brown Rudnick.

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Opinion

USPTO Must Address The Right Question In Sanofi Case

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Appeals Review Panel's questions in Ex parte Baurin indicate recognition of broader doctrinal issues, but rather than approaching from separate angles, the panel should concentrate on a single fundamental question about obviousness-type double patenting, says Jeremy Lowe at Spencer Fane.

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4 Emerging Approaches To AI Protective Order Language

Over the last year, at least five federal district courts have issued or analyzed specific protective order provisions restricting the use of generative artificial intelligence platforms with protected materials, establishing that proactive AI-specific provisions are now standard practice and demonstrating that no single model works for every case, says Joel Bush at Kilpatrick.

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How They Won It

Attys For Tufts Profs Didn't Blink In A Tenure Standoff

By Julie Manganis

When Jennifer Henricks and Kevin Peters first learned what was happening to tenured professors at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston a few years ago, they knew that what was at stake involved more than just a dispute over the terms of a contract.

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Palestinian Ex-Associate Slaps DLA Piper With Bias Claim

By Lynn LaRowe

DLA Piper has been hit with a federal civil rights lawsuit in Illinois from a former summer associate alleging discrimination, a hostile work environment and retaliation based on her identity as a Palestinian, Gazan, Arab and Muslim woman.

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Fired Immigration Judge Says Trump Can't Skirt Bias Laws

By Grace Elletson

A former immigration judge urged a D.C. federal court not to throw out her bias suit challenging her firing, arguing the U.S. Department of Justice was pushing the "breathtaking proposition" that the president was empowered to commit unlawful discrimination.

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Law Student Can't Get School To Nix Kirk Comment Discipline

By Mike Curley

A Texas federal judge on Tuesday said the court cannot force Texas Tech University's leaders to rescind a reprimand against a law student who allegedly celebrated following the death of Charlie Kirk, as the university has sovereign immunity.

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Michigan Dems Noncommittal On Trump's Judicial Pick

By Courtney Bublé

Michigan's two Democratic senators played it coy on Tuesday when asked if they would support the district court nominee for their state that the president announced the night before.

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PayPal Settles Gov't DEI Probe With Small Biz Program

By Sarah Jarvis

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it has reached a settlement with PayPal Inc. to end an investigation into what the department said was a discriminatory investment program for Black- and minority-owned businesses.

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