Analysis

Is Pattie Gonna Get Out Of This? Patagonia's IP And PR Pickle

By Theresa Schliep

Patagonia's trademark infringement suit against drag queen and environmental activist Pattie Gonia has caught the attention of both intellectual property attorneys and popular culture aficionados, with lawyers saying the action highlights how IP enforcement and public relations management aren't always in perfect harmony.

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Trump Era Worse Than McCarthy For Speech, Law Dean Says

By Bonnie Eslinger

The dean of UC Berkeley's law school told an audience of lawyers and artists on Thursday that America is experiencing "an unprecedented assault on the Constitution, on the First Amendment, and on freedom of speech," comparing the country under President Donald Trump unfavorably to the McCarthy era.

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Goldstein Seeks Sentencing Delay, Citing New Tax Claims

By Jared Foretek

SCOTUSblog founder Thomas Goldstein renewed his push Wednesday in Maryland federal court for a delayed sentencing, saying prosecutors blindsided his defense by including additional uncharged years of alleged tax avoidance in the government's sentencing memorandum.

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Justices Say FCC Fines Can Stand Without Jury Trial

By Christopher Cole

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Federal Communications Commission's authority to issue monetary penalties Thursday, knocking down challenges to nearly $200 million in fines against the Big Three wireless carriers for failing to protect consumer data privacy.

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NY AG Must Preserve Cohen Docs In Trump's Civil Fraud Case

By Frank G. Runyeon

The New York state trial court judge overseeing President Donald Trump's civil fraud case granted his request to preserve notes from private meetings between state litigators and Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen after the key witness said he felt "pressured" to testify.

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Meta Says Section 230 Foils Social Media Addiction Verdict

By Rae Ann Varona

Meta urged a Los Angeles judge on Thursday to toss a landmark verdict against the social media giant and Google for harming a young woman's mental health, saying it deserves a total victory under Section 230 because the plaintiff was addicted to third-party content, not the platforms themselves.

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Ex-Detroit News Anchor Files Sex Bias Claims Against Fox

By Susan Smiley

Former Fox 2 Detroit news anchor Taryn Asher is accusing her ex-employer of sex discrimination and retaliation, alleging in a Michigan federal lawsuit that her male co-worker got prime assignments, interviews and scheduling and that she was excluded from key news meetings.

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AI Co. Midnight Labs Gets Sony Innovation Fund Investment

By Matt Perez

Midnight Labs, a Dublin-based artificial intelligence company focused on intellectual property enforcement, announced Thursday it received an investment from the Sony Innovation Fund to expand its software in the U.S. and Japanese markets.

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Deals Rumor Mill

Anthropic, DeepSeek Pivot To New Financing, More Rumors

By Al Barbarino

Anthropic and China's DeepSeek are among a growing group of AI firms turning to new financing structures to meet surging demand for compute power. Reports indicate that private equity giants are assembling a $36 billion private credit vehicle to help fund Anthropic access to certain Google chips, while DeepSeek has reportedly broken from its earlier strategy by arranging more than $7 billion in outside funding.

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Al Jazeera Beats DMCA Claim, For Now, In Storm Video Suit

By Ivan Moreno

A California federal judge has dismissed videographers' claim that Al Jazeera falsified copyright attribution on weather footage posted to YouTube, finding the plaintiffs failed to plausibly allege the network acted with intent to facilitate infringement, while giving them a chance to amend their complaint.

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Ex-Football Stars Sue NCAA, Conferences For Lost NIL Pay

By Elaine Briseño

Two college football stars, who went on to play in the NFL, have filed antitrust suits claiming the NCAA, Big Ten and Southeastern conferences exploited them for their abilities while denying them compensation for their names, images and likenesses.

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5th Circ. Unblocks Texas App Age-Check Law During Appeal

By Lauren Berg

The Fifth Circuit on Thursday paused an injunction halting a Texas law that requires app store owners to verify users' ages and block minors from downloading apps or making in-app purchases without parental consent, saying the state will likely succeed in showing the district court erred in blocking the law.

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Meta Says 9th Circ. Needn't Revisit Facebook Genocide Ruling

By Mike Curley

Meta Platforms Inc. is fighting a petition from two women asking the Ninth Circuit for a full court rehearing of their suit alleging that Facebook's 2009 algorithms contributed to the destruction of their villages during the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, saying the circuit's interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act doesn't need revisiting.

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Live Nation Remedies Discovery To Wait On New Trial Motions

By Bryan Koenig

A New York federal judge said that state attorneys general will have to wait on discovery to bolster their bid for a Live Nation Entertainment Inc. breakup, preferring to first tackle the live music giant's bid to upend jury findings faulting the company for monopolizing the industry.

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Card Buyers Drop Suit Against Fanatics, NFL, NBA, MLB

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

A New York federal judge has granted a request from a group of trading card consumers suing the NFL, the NBA, MLB and sports gear retailer Fanatics over trading card prices to dismiss the case.

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NTIA Chief Presses To Close 'Gap' In Gov't Spectrum Fund

By Christopher Cole

The head of the U.S. Department of Commerce agency that manages federal spectrum pushed Thursday to change a legal provision that could delay the transfer of government-held airwaves to the private sector.

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Maverick Gaming Reaches SBA Settlement Over COVID Loans

By Ganesh Setty

Casino operator Maverick Gaming told a Texas bankruptcy court it has arrived at a settlement with the U.S. Small Business Administration over its lawsuit seeking forgiveness for COVID-19 pandemic loans, a deal that would allow SBA proofs of claim as general unsecured claims.

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QVC Defends Ch. 11 Plan Against Shareholder Objection

By Ben Zigterman

QVC Group Inc. defended its Chapter 11 plan at the beginning of a multiday confirmation hearing, calling it the result of a robust, good-faith process and arguing that a competing proposal from objecting preferred shareholders would lead to years of litigation.

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2nd Circ.'s Embedded Video Ruling May Protect Publishers

The Second Circuit's recent decision in Richardson v. Townsquare, dismissing an infringement claim arising from an embedding of a YouTube-hosted interview, reaffirms a potent defense for publishers who regularly use social media platforms' embed functionality, says Amanda Harris at Jassy Vick.

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Product-Or-Content Question Is Pivotal In AI Litigation

A growing range of civil cases against OpenAI address the question of whether the output of a generative artificial intelligence system is a product, subject to traditional tort doctrine, or third-party content — and the framing courts adopt will shape software liability well beyond AI, says David Meldofsky at Lawsuit Informer.

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FTC Sweep Signals Increased 'Made In USA' Claim Scrutiny

After the Federal Trade Commission's recent enforcement sweep targeting allegedly deceptive "Made in USA" claims, companies should expect continued scrutiny of both traditional and digital marketing channels, coupled with sustained focus on supply chain transparency and claim substantiation, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

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Citron Founder Verdict Tests Reach Of 'Half-Truth' Fraud

A California federal jury's conviction this week of Citron founder Andrew Left may be remembered less as a conventional manipulation prosecution than as a case about how far the "half-truth" doctrine can reach when applied to modern market speech, says Elisha Kobre at Sheppard.

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Series

Competing At Poker Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Playing poker in male-dominated rooms taught me to treat skepticism as background noise when my opponents seem to underestimate me, to apply pressure when it matters and to adapt without losing strategic discipline — skills that are all indispensable in restructuring and insolvency matters, says Alexis Gambale at Pashman Stein.

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Roundup

UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Megan Norcott

The past week in London has seen the U.K.'s oldest Indian restaurant launch an appeal against King Charles III's property company in an effort to stop its eviction, trustees of a bankrupt former EY tax partner file a claim against his wife, and 37 leading insurers bring a lawsuit against agrichemical company Syngenta over an insurance dispute. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

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Katten Is Latest Firm To Match Milbank Associate Pay Raise

By Kevin Penton

Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP has joined the growing list of firms that are largely matching a new pay scale for associates set earlier this week by Milbank LLP, with attorneys set to see annual pay increases of $10,000 to $20,000.

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Roundup

GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

Among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week, investor advocates have questioned the legality of the SEC's plan to withdraw corporate climate disclosure regulations, and an insurance broker's report found claims made under policies for mergers and acquisitions have risen in frequency and severity.

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North Korea Sanctions Case Ends In Plea After 2 Mistrials

By Phillip Bantz

A Chinese national pled guilty on Thursday in D.C. federal court to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. in a sanctions evasion scheme involving North Korean tobacco smuggling, bringing an end to a protracted prosecution after two separate deadlocked juries.

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ICE Atty's Bid To Ax Contempt Order Is 'Absurd,' Amicus Says

By Emily Sawicki

A court-appointed amicus curae has told the Eighth Circuit that a Minnesota federal judge was right to hold a government attorney in contempt after finding that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flouted a court order, leading to a detained man being released hundreds of miles from his home without legal identification.

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Morgan & Morgan Explores Private Equity Investment Options

By Emma Cueto

The nation's largest personal injury firm, Morgan & Morgan, is exploring its options with regard to a potential private equity investment, with the firm saying Friday it is in the early stages of understanding what such an investment might mean and whether it is a good opportunity or "fool's gold."

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Winston Taylor leads this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court ended a patent suit over Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc.'s generic version of a heart drug that uses a so-called skinny label.

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Titan Of The Plaintiffs Bar: Morgan & Morgan's John Yanchunis

By Matt Perez

John Yanchunis of Morgan & Morgan PA has been at the forefront of data privacy litigation for nearly three decades, but what stands out to his colleague Ryan McGee is not the litany of wins but the attorney's humility.

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Legal Job Market Surges With Special Litigation, Gov't Work

By Tracey Read

The legal sector saw 1,200 more jobs in May after gaining 1,900 positions the month before, according to seasonally adjusted data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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First Democrat Returns A Blue Slip For Judicial Nominee

By Courtney Bublé

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is the first Democratic senator in the second Trump administration to return a blue slip for a judicial nominee.

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DLA Piper Urges 2nd Circ. To End 'Vexatious' Malpractice Suit

By Emily Sawicki

The Second Circuit should uphold the dismissal of a Chinese software company's legal malpractice suit and $635,000 in sanctions against it and its lawyers, DLA Piper has argued, citing previous favorable rulings in the matter by a federal magistrate judge, district court judge, state justice and five-judge panel of the New York state appeals 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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