High Court Passes On Roberto Clemente Plate TM Dispute

By Ivan Moreno

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a dispute between Roberto Clemente's sons and Puerto Rico over commemorative license plates bearing the baseball legend's name and image.

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Justices Won't Revisit Toss Of White Anchor's Race Bias Suit

By Patrick Hoff

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to review a white former news anchor's lawsuit alleging she was fired because of her race and replaced with a Black woman, despite her argument that the Fifth Circuit used an improperly high standard when dismissing her case.

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Alex Jones Takes Sandy Hook Appeal To Texas High Court

By Aaron Keller

Alex Jones has asked the Texas Supreme Court to review discovery sanctions orders that led to a since-trimmed $50 million judgment in a Sandy Hook family's Lone Star State emotional distress case, arguing a judge held him "liable for everything" without addressing state or federal constitutional free speech protections.

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Goldstein Says Gov't Conceded Key Trial Errors

By Jared Foretek

SCOTUSblog co-founder Thomas Goldstein told the Fourth Circuit that the federal prosecutors who netted 12 tax and mortgage fraud convictions effectively conceded they hid evidence by steering a key witness to new testimony mid-trial and had reversed their stance on jury instructions, two key issues in Goldstein's appeal.

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Belichick's Ex Says Airbnb Hosts Leaked Ring Footage

By Julie Manganis

A Massachusetts couple who rented a home on Airbnb to Jordon Hudson while her relationship with ex-New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick was still not public shared Ring camera footage of the NFL legend that subsequently went viral and exposed their romance, according to a lawsuit accusing the property owners of invasion of privacy and breach of contract.

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Suno Accused Of 'Breathtaking' Elvis, Eminem IP Infringement

By Dorothy Atkins

Elvis Presley and Eminem's music rights owners have hit Suno Inc. with separate lawsuits in California federal court, alleging the startup's artificial intelligence-powered music generating tools rip off the artists' voice, image and likeness on "literally a breathtaking scale," and are demanding hundreds of millions of dollars in statutory damages.

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Justices Won't Review Sony's Defeat Of $500M Patent Suit

By Ryan Davis

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal of a decision that Sony's PlayStation controllers don't infringe a computer input device patent, shutting down the patent owner's bid to revive the $500 million case.

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2nd Circ. Affirms $19.5M Win For Scholastic In Insurance Fight

By Elliot Weld

The Second Circuit has upheld a $19.5 million judgment for Scholastic Inc. following a fight with a Travelers unit over whether the insurer had to cover Scholastic's litigation expenses in a separate copyright and trademark infringement case.

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Fed. Circ. Backs Google's Partial PTAB Win Over Sonos

By Dani Kass

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board properly upheld claims of a Google wireless network technology patent in the company's long-running fight with Sonos, the Federal Circuit said Monday.

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TikTok Beats Website Creation IP Suit With Alice Invalidation

By Dani Kass

A California federal judge has dismissed patent litigation against ByteDance and its TikTok unit, saying the website creation patents they were accused of infringing are invalid.

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Brief

Book Publishers Win $19.5M Default Judgment Against WeLib

By Ivan Moreno

A Manhattan federal judge on Monday ordered online "shadow library" WeLib to pay 13 major publishers $19.5 million for copyright infringement and directed hosting and internet service providers to disable its domains, handing the publishers a default judgment designed to shut the site down.

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Justices Won't Review NYT's $2.4M Auto-Renewal Class Deal

By Brian Steele

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an attorney's petition to contest a $5,000 incentive award included in a $2.375 million class action settlement that resolved claims over The New York Times Co.'s subscription auto-renewal practices, leaving in place a Second Circuit decision to let the deal close.

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Calif. Panel Won't Reinstate Schools' Social Media Suits

By Mike Curley

A California state appeals court has declined to revive claims from four school districts in California, Florida, Washington and Rhode Island against Meta, Google, Youtube, Snapchat and TikTok over children's mental health, agreeing with a lower court that they cannot pursue negligence and nuisance claims.

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Meta Looks To Toss Facial Data AI Training Claims

By Celeste Bott

Meta Platforms Inc. has urged an Illinois federal judge to throw out a proposed class action accusing it of illegally harvesting Facebook and Instagram users' facial data to train artificial intelligence models, arguing that the plaintiffs cannot show their specific photos were used and that the company is exempt from Illinois' biometric privacy law because of its financial services subsidiary.

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Coca-Cola Secretly Let Tech Giants Track Data, Suit Says

By Bonnie Eslinger

The Coca-Cola Co. has been hit with a proposed class action in California federal court alleging it violated the privacy of visitors to its websites by allowing tech giants like Meta, Google, TikTok, and Microsoft to track and collect the users' data even if they'd opted out of nonessential cookies.

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Live Nation Ex-VP Must Arbitrate $35M Whistleblower Suit

By Craig Clough

A California state judge Monday ruled that a former Live Nation executive who claims the company fired him for blowing the whistle on corporate misconduct can't avoid arbitration, although he said the parties can bring him any discovery disputes, citing concerns about the arbitrator's discovery rules.

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Pinterest Top Brass Hit With Derivative Suit Over AI, Ad Claims

By Hailey Konnath

Another Pinterest shareholder has filed a derivative complaint against the company's top brass, this time claiming they made false and misleading statements about the performance of Pinterest's artificial intelligence-driven product suite, in addition to other misleading statements about advertising and tariffs.

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Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

By Jarek Rutz

The Delaware Chancery Court last week cleared the way for Cloudflare Inc. to seek immediate review of an injunction blocking a stock restructuring designed to preserve its founders' control, while setting a January hearing in a similar dispute over Meta Platforms Inc.'s plan to create nonvoting shares.

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Wireless Growth Leads To Call For Rethink Of FCC Rural Aid

By Christopher Cole

A trade group for major mobile carriers told the Federal Communications Commission that explosive private-sector growth in fixed wireless access calls for the agency to reorient its approach to subsidizing network deployment in hard-to-reach areas.

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Network Group Calls For 'Clear' Permit Timelines, Fee Cuts

By Christopher Cole

A trade group for advanced networks and data centers urged the Federal Communications Commission to press ahead with rules that could effectively hasten local permits and reduce paperwork fees stemming from broadband projects.

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Brief

FCC Atty Shifts To Chair Carr's Office As Legal Adviser

By Christopher Cole

A legal adviser for a Federal Communications Commission member has moved over to a similar role in FCC Chair Brendan Carr's office.

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Meta, TikTok Cases Show How AGs May Redefine Governance

The Meta Platforms settlement and TikTok lawsuit addressing social media harms to minors highlight that state attorneys general are not merely extracting payments, but are also using litigation and settlements to impose durable product, institutional and policy change, say attorneys at Snell & Wilmer.

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What FTC Publicis Deal Means For Data Infrastructure M&A

The Federal Trade Commission's recent proposed resolution to its concerns over Publicis' $2.2 billion acquisition of LiveRamp shows how the FTC may treat deals involving important data infrastructure layers, even when the parties operate at different levels of the technology stack, say attorneys at Wilson Sonsini.

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Character.AI Ch. 11 Tests New Model For Preserving AI Value

Character.AI's bankruptcy is charting a path for preserving value in an artificial intelligence business that depends on retaining unfinished technology and the employees who know how to develop it, while accounting for the firm's failure and its consequences for creditors, says Diane Dick at University of Iowa College of Law.

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High Court Disbars Judicial Watch Founder Larry Klayman

By David Minsky

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday disbarred Judicial Watch founder and Florida conservative activist attorney Larry Klayman following his 18-month suspension issued last year by the D.C. Court of Appeals. 

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Firms Must Face RICO Claims In Asbestos Fraud Suit

By Emily Field

An Illinois federal judge on Friday held that Simmons Hanly Conroy LLP and Sokolove Law must face racketeering claims brought by a Los Angeles industrial pipe manufacturer alleging that the firms brought baseless asbestos claims, finding that an antitrust doctrine shielding those who petition the courts does not apply.

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DOJ's Civil Division Head Joins Agency Exits After Midterms

By Jack Karp

The leader of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division, Brett A. Shumate, on Monday became at least the fifth top DOJ official to step down following Republicans' defeat in last week's midterm elections.

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Trump Eyes OLC Chief For Texas Judgeship After Midterms

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump is considering the head of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel for a federal judgeship in Texas, a process that started right after the Democrats won big in last week's midterm elections.

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AAA Says Consumers' Monopoly Claims Lack Factual Support

By Caroline Simson

The American Arbitration Association is lashing out against consumers who accuse the institution of monopolizing the consumer arbitration services market, telling a federal judge on Monday that they should be sanctioned for including "false, misleading, and unsupported allegations" in an amended complaint.

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Wash. Panel Nixes $10K Sanctions On Monsanto PCB Attys

By Rachel Riley

A Washington Court of Appeals panel has overturned a combined $10,000 in sanctions against four attorneys who defended Monsanto from chemical poisoning claims, concluding Monday that the trial court overstepped its authority by personally punishing the lawyers for late disclosure of expert witnesses.

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