Microsoft Says Feeding Books And News To AI Is Fair Use

By Elliot Weld

Microsoft on Friday told a Manhattan federal court that using books and news articles to train the large language model behind the artificial intelligence model Copilot counts as fair use, and the company should therefore be granted a favorable judgment.

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Chrisleys Fight Balch & Bingham's Bid To Ax Malpractice Suit

By James Boyle

Reality television stars Todd and Julie Chrisley asked a Georgia federal judge on Friday to reject an attempt by their former attorneys to dismiss a legal malpractice lawsuit that claims a critical pretrial mistake allowed evidence obtained through an unlawful search to be used against them at their criminal trial.

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DOJ Ordered To Turn Over 'Weaponization' Fund Discovery

By Jared Foretek

A Virginia federal magistrate judge ordered the Trump administration Friday to move quickly in turning over documents connected to its proposed "Anti-Weaponization Fund," including the names of those who structured it before the idea was shot down in several federal courts and withdrawn by the U.S. Department of Justice.

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Musk's XAI Can't Block Minn. Ban On Image 'Nudification'

By Gina Kim

Elon Musk's xAI can't stop Minnesota's ban on image "nudification" technology, after a federal judge said Friday he found "without hesitation that the balance of equities weighs heavily in favor of the state," which has an interest in shielding the public from harm caused by the dissemination of sexualized images.

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Ex-NBA Player Sues Chicago Sky Over WNBA Game Ejection

By Celeste Bott

Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom has sued the Chicago Sky, the city of Chicago and the owner of Wintrust Arena in Illinois federal court, alleging they violated his free speech rights by ejecting him from an August WNBA game and indefinitely banning him from the arena because of his views on transgender participation in women's sports.

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Roundup

NC High Court Snapshot: TikTok, DuPont, NCAA Top Sept.

By Hayley Fowler

North Carolina's highest court is returning from its summer hiatus with a stacked September lineup of cases for oral argument, starting with a name, image and likeness suit brought by members of N.C. State University's 1983 championship basketball team against the NCAA.

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DivX Loses Bid For New Patent Trial After Loss To Netflix

By Lauren Berg

DivX cannot have a new trial over anti-copying and image-quality patents after a California jury cleared Netflix of infringement in March, a federal judge ruled Friday, saying the video compression technology company hasn't shown the jury's decision was not supported by substantial evidence.

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Brief

Licensing Co., TSMC Settle ITC Chip Patent Case

By Elliot Weld

A company called Longitude Licensing Ltd. has reached a settlement with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. to end a case against several technology companies at the U.S. International Trade Commission seeking a ban on imports of certain products.

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Calif. Privacy Agency Flags Data Brokers' Reporting Gaps

By Allison Grande

California's privacy agency is warning data brokers that they run the risk of accumulating hefty daily fines for not only failing to register with the agency, but also for providing inaccurate information about their data collection and sale activities in connection with that registration. 

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9th Circ. Won't Let Roblox Arbitrate Online Safety Suit

By Mike Curley

The Ninth Circuit denied Roblox Corp.'s bid to compel arbitration in a suit by a man alleging his daughter was targeted on the platform by adult predators, saying its delay in seeking arbitration while it litigated the suit on the merits waived any right to arbitrate.

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Meta Hit With Class Action Claiming AI Tools Aid Crypto Fraud

By Dorothy Atkins

Three cryptocurrency scam victims hit Meta Platforms Inc. with a proposed class action Thursday, accusing the social media giant of turning a blind eye to reports of rampant crypto-ad scams on its platforms and instead perpetuating the scams by providing scammers with artificial intelligence tools that boost their impact.

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'Bad Faith' Subpoenas On Apple Execs Spur Fee Sanctions

By Bryan Koenig

A California federal magistrate judge imposed sanctions Thursday on Joseph M. Alioto of Alioto Law Firm for repeatedly trying to depose senior Apple executives, including then-CEO Tim Cook, in an attempt to drag the iPhone-maker back into consumer antitrust litigation accusing Google of shutting out rival search engines.

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Analysis

ERISA Recap: 5 Appellate Rulings To Know From August

By Kellie Mejdrich

The Seventh Circuit kept an Arkansas pharmacy benefit manager rule in place as not preempted by federal benefits law, the Fourth Circuit revived an Altria ex-worker's dispute over benefit plan documents, and the Eleventh Circuit reversed a pretrial win for Royal Caribbean in cruise workers' suit challenging 401(k) funds. Here, Law360 looks at those and two other major appellate decisions from August involving ERISA that benefits attorneys may want to know.

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4th Circ. ERISA Docs Ruling Deepens Split, High Court Told

By Patrick Hoff

A participant in Netflix's employee health plan asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit's dismissal of his lawsuit alleging that the company unlawfully refused his request for plan documents, arguing that a recent Fourth Circuit decision discredits the streaming giant's argument against a circuit split.

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Rent The Runway Inks $9M Deal To End Investor IPO Suit

By Sydney Price

Rent the Runway Inc. and several of its directors, including actress Gwyneth Paltrow, and underwriters have reached a $9 million deal with shareholders who accused them of concealing major challenges the designer rental company was facing prior to its 2021 initial public offering.

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DOJ Officials Immune From NJ Mayor's False Arrest Suit

By George Woolston

A New Jersey federal court on Friday dismissed Newark Mayor Ras Baraka's suit against federal officials for his allegedly unlawful arrest last year outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, finding the defendants are immune under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

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Robinhood To Halt Sports Trades In Mich. Amid Appeals

By Katryna Perera

Robinhood Derivatives LLC has agreed to stop offering new sports-related event contracts in Michigan, and the state has agreed not to pursue an enforcement action against the exchange until the Sixth Circuit rules on any of the pending appeals regarding the legality of sports event contract offerings.

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Top Groups Lobbying The FCC

By Christopher Cole

Lobbying activity at the Federal Communications Commission dropped off in August, but dozens of groups still sought to affect agency policies in areas such as media ownership caps, satellite spectrum sharing, network modernization and more.

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Justices Let FCC's New Campaign Ad Rates Take Effect

By Katie Buehler

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for the Federal Communications Commission to extend discounted television and radio advertising rates previously reserved for political candidates to political parties and joint fundraising committees that buy spots in coordination with candidates.

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SpaceX Presses For Opening 3 Bands To Direct-To-Device

By Nadia Dreid

SpaceX has its eye on three bands of spectrum it wants the Federal Communications Commission to open for direct-to-device satellite services, a move it told the agency would be good for both competition and the integration of satellite and terrestrial networks.

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Advocates Slam SpaceX Proposal To Cut FCC High-Cost Aid

By Nadia Dreid

SpaceX's suggestion that the Federal Communications Commission "wind down and sunset" the agency's multibillion dollar program that provides subsidies for installing broadband in high cost, hard-to-serve places, is a bad one, say rural broadband advocates.

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Brief

FCC Pays Back $3.08B 'Rip And Replace' Treasury Loan

By Christopher Cole

After completing a spectrum auction directed by federal law, the Federal Communications Commission said Friday that it has repaid a $3.08 billion loan from the U.S. Treasury that it used to fill a funding gap in the "rip and replace" network security program.

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Brief

FCC Bans People Convicted Of Fraud From USF

By Nadia Dreid

Seven people who abused the Federal Communications Commission's E-rate program, which subsidizes the cost of internet service for schools and libraries, have been forever banned from participating in any of the agency's other internet subsidy programs.

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Meta Layoff Suit Serves As Early Test Of AI Bias Claims

A lawsuit in California federal court alleging that Meta's use of artificial intelligence in recent layoffs negatively affected employees on protected leave provides insight for plaintiffs about what evidence to preserve and how to build these discrimination claims, says Manny Starr at Frontier Law Center.

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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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Legal Sector Hiring Grows For 5th Month, But At Slower Pace

By Rachel Rippetoe

The legal sector saw 600 more jobs in August, growing for the fifth consecutive month, according to seasonally adjusted data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

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3rd Circ. Revives Malpractice Claim Against Kirkland Atty

By Emily Sawicki

A New Jersey divorcee may once again pursue a legal malpractice claim against a Kirkland & Ellis LLP attorney who she said lost her millions by mishandling estate documents, after the Third Circuit found it could be possible to link her alleged damages to the lawyer's work.

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Quinn Emanuel DQ'd In Defamation Case Over Stock Reports

By Lynn LaRowe

A Texas federal court on Friday booted Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP from representing a Hong Kong manufacturing company in its defamation lawsuit against investment research service Muddy Waters LLC after finding that the law firm had received relevant confidential information when it represented Muddy Waters in a related government probe.

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DC Panel's Rare Rebuke Over AI Errors Flags Rules Gap

By Andrea Keckley

A D.C. appellate court panel issued a rare sua sponte sanctions order on Thursday after finding nonexistent case citations in a brief filed by a McCabe Weisberg & Conway LLC attorney representing Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. in a foreclosure action, noting an apparent gap in the rules governing the court's sanctions authority.

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Motley Rice Founder Remembered As Titan Of Mass Tort Bar

By Adrian Cruz

Motley Rice LLC co-founder Joseph F. Rice, who died Thursday, was remembered by former colleagues and friends as a "transformational" attorney and "giant in the civil litigation bar" who spent decades working on some of the most high-profile mass torts and obtaining landmark asbestos, opioid and tobacco settlements.

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Sinema Can't Duck Suit Over Affair With Ex-Security Guard

By Y. Peter Kang

A North Carolina federal judge Friday denied former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's bid to escape the suit brought by the ex-wife of a former member of her security detail with whom she allegedly had an affair, saying the district court indeed has the authority to adjudicate the case.

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Roundup

Injury Law Roundup: Meta's Social Media Addiction Deal

By Y. Peter Kang

A $17.1 billion social media addiction settlement between Meta and 29 states and Johnson & Johnson's $5.5 billion ovarian cancer deal over its talc products lead Law360's Injury Law Roundup.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Morgan Verkamp LLC and Sparacino PLLC lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Eleventh Circuit held that the False Claims Act's qui tam provisions do not violate the appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution.

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Roundup

GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

Attorneys and academics differ over whether the moves by Meta's in-house lawyers ahead of its $17 billion settlement over claims its content harmed children were legal missteps or defensible efforts to manage litigation risk. And the co-founders of a partner-only law firm told Law360 Pulse how their technology reduces intake, billing and other nonbillable tasks that attorneys would normally perform. These are among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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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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