AGs, WGA Want April Merger Trial, Paramount Wants Nov.

By Bryan Koenig

Paramount Skydance Corp. battled over trial timing Friday as the Writers Guild of America and state attorneys general challenge its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., in a joint California federal court brief where the plaintiffs sought April 2027 proceedings and the companies proposed a November kickoff.

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Trump, Copyright Chief Spar Over Justices' Removal Rulings

By Ivan Moreno

The Trump administration and U.S. Copyright Office leader Shira Perlmutter have each told a D.C. federal judge that U.S. Supreme Court rulings in June regarding presidential removal power bolster their side in the fight over her firing, with Perlmutter saying they leave intact her statutory challenge and the government saying they confirm President Donald Trump's authority to oust her.

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Papaya Gaming Files Ch. 15 To Shield Against $719M Verdict

By Yun Park

Israeli mobile gaming company Papaya Gaming, which runs millions of Solitaire and Bingo tournaments every day, filed a Chapter 15 bankruptcy petition in a Delaware court after being hit with a $719 million judgment last week in a New York federal court over false advertising claims.

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Guitar Co.'s New Trial Request In Gibson TM Case Falls Flat

By Adam Lidgett

A Texas federal judge has backed a jury's finding that a Florida-based guitar-maker infringed Gibson Inc.'s trademarks on the shapes of some of its famous guitars, like the Flying V and Explorer, and upheld his order awarding Gibson $168,000.

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Tenn. Official Tells Meta Jury Teen Sadness Rates Rising

By Cara Salvatore

The executive director of Tennessee's Commission on Children and Youth testified Monday in the state's mental health trial against Meta that the percentage of high school students in the state who report feeling sad or hopeless has been trending upward in the last decade.

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Pokémon Sued Over Director's Alleged Secret Bathroom Cams

By Rachel Riley

A Pokémon employee has launched a proposed class action against the trading card giant in Washington state court, claiming a former engineering director installed secret cameras in bathrooms of its Evergreen State corporate office to surveil women and children as they undressed.

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Nvidia Brass Face Suit Over AI Training Using Pirated Works

By Katryna Perera

Nvidia's leadership faces a shareholder suit in Illinois federal court alleging they oversaw the development and training of the company's artificial intelligence models using pirated works, including copyrighted books, videos and human speech recordings.

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Rising Star: Gibson Dunn's Connor Sullivan

By Benjamin Morse

Connor Sullivan of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP helped secure a first-of-its-kind defamation victory for OpenAI and persuaded a New York judge to dismiss Sean "Diddy" Combs' $100 million suit against NBCUniversal, earning him a spot among the media and entertainment attorneys under age 40 honored by Law360 as Rising Stars.

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PetMeds Beats Pixel Tracking Privacy Suit Over Standing Flaw

By Allison Grande

A Florida federal judge has tossed a proposed class action accusing online pet pharmacy PetMed Express Inc. of deploying tracking tools that illegally transmitted website visitors' data to third parties, finding that class discovery had revealed the plaintiffs lack standing to support their remaining federal and state wiretap claims. 

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Monthly Merger Review Snapshot

By Matthew Perlman

A group of state enforcers challenged Paramount's planned $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, as a separate group of states and DirecTV accused Nexstar of violating an order preventing it from integrating with Tegna and the Federal Trade Commission faced a bench trial seeking to block a constructive adhesive deal.

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9th Circ. Won't Revive Google Rival's Antitrust Suit

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

A panel of the Ninth Circuit has refused to reinstate an ad tech company's allegations that Google harmed market competition for digital advertising by removing a now-defunct advertising app from its Play Store.

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Blanche's Nix Of Trump's $1.8B Fund Wins Over GOP Sens.

By Asha Glover

Two holdout GOP senators said Monday that they would support confirmation of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to the permanent role after he gave assurances that President Donald Trump's $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, created as part of a settlement with the IRS, would not move forward.

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GOP Sens. Back FCC Cellphone 'Unlocking' Rules

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

Republican senators have endorsed the Federal Communications Commission's effort to adopt a uniform standard for mobile device "unlocking" rules.

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Top Groups Lobbying The FCC

By Christopher Cole

The Federal Communications Commission heard from lobbyists more than 170 times in July as they sought to sway the FCC on satellite licensing rules, an auction of C-band airwaves, rural healthcare aid, broadcast media ownership limits and more.

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Full 6th Circ. To Rethink FCC's Data Breach Victory

By Nadia Dreid

The full Sixth Circuit will rehear a panel decision upholding the Federal Communications Commission's expanded data breach notification rules for telecommunications carriers, throwing the legality of the rules back up in the air after much protest about the original decision.

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Brief

VoIP Provider Didn't Pay USF Bills, FCC Says

By Nadia Dreid

A Louisiana VoIP provider will pay the Federal Communications Commission $25,000 to get out from under an investigation probing whether the company failed to pay as much as it was supposed to into the Universal Service Fund.

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House-Passed KIDS Act Spurs Child Data Practices Audit

Graham Dean, Brian Roper-Nelson and Will Quick at Brooks Pierce discuss the noteworthy sections of the U.S. House of Representatives' recently passed Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, the potential revisions as the law moves through the U.S. Senate and the significant business changes that the House law would require.

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FTC Focus: Enforcing Vertically Integrated Operating Systems

As digital platforms increasingly pair operating systems with commerce, advertising, content and data, antitrust scrutiny will turn on whether those integrations create private bottlenecks that foreclose rivals through access, ranking, interoperability or defaults, pushing courts and enforcement agencies to adapt traditional utility and merger frameworks more aggressively, say attorneys at Proskauer.

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China's New Outbound Investment Rule Reshapes Deal Risk

China's new outbound investment regulation introduces broad national security review and penalties, including personal liability, that will necessitate deeper diligence of cross-border deal participants with Chinese ties, earlier regulatory planning and closer attention to sanctions exposure, say attorneys at Freshfields.

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DOJ Renews Bid To Oust Susman From ABA Trump EO Case

By Jared Foretek

The U.S. Department of Justice renewed its call for a D.C. federal judge to disqualify Susman Godfrey LLP from representing the American Bar Association in its challenge to the Trump administration's law firm executive orders, saying Susman Godfrey's attorneys could potentially have to serve as fact witnesses in the case.

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Jackson Walker, Trustee Agree On $15M Romance Settlement

By Emma Cueto

Jackson Walker LLP has agreed to pay $15 million and reform its conflicts and disclosure practices to resolve claims brought by the regional U.S. trustee regarding bankruptcy fees approved by a bankruptcy judge who was at the time concealing a relationship with a Jackson Walker partner.

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ABA To Assess Aggressive BigLaw Campus Recruitment

By Emily Sawicki

The American Bar Association's policymaking body on Monday approved a resolution sponsored by law students seeking reprieve from increasingly early BigLaw recruitment drives and clarified rules regarding client confidentiality and prosecutorial responsibility, some of the first votes taken on day one of its annual meeting.

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Simpson Thacher's PIPE Work Was 'Dogged,' Jury Told

By Jake Maher

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP did all it could to help Patriot National Inc. and the company's owner and warn them about risks as they pursued a financing deal, a former capital markets attorney told a Florida state jury Monday in the insurance services company's malpractice case against the firm.

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Analysis

How State SG Offices Became A Judicial Pipeline

By Cara Bayles

The rapid growth of Missouri's solicitor general's office illustrates the import of top state appellate roles, which offer young lawyers a chance to gain courtroom experience they might never acquire in BigLaw. The gig is also, for young conservatives especially, one of the fastest paths to the federal bench.

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Conn. Justices Order Education For Atty Who Missed AI Flubs

By Christine DeRosa

The Connecticut Supreme Court has ordered a GLG Law LLC attorney to complete continuing education after finding that seven errors in filings caused by ChatGPT stemmed from negligence in the use of new technology, not from an intentional attempt to deceive or mislead the court.

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Brief

Judge Denies Bid To Oust Kirkland From Trade Secret Feud

By Ivan Moreno

A California federal judge has denied a healthcare software company's attempt to disqualify Kirkland & Ellis LLP from representing Commure Inc. in a trade secret lawsuit, ruling that the plaintiff failed to prove that information it disclosed during a prospective client consultation was materially harmful enough to warrant disqualification.

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Disputes Continue, 1 Week Into NY Public Defender Strikes

By Andrea Keckley

Two unions representing hundreds of New York public defenders remain on strike Monday, with managers from the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem requesting third-party mediation during their most recent negotiations on Sunday.

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Roundup

The Top In-House Hires Of July

By Michele Gorman

Legal department hires during the past month included high-profile appointments at Goldman Sachs, Coinbase and Sanofi. Here, Law360 Pulse looks at some of the top in-house announcements from July.

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Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

By Jarek Rutz

The Delaware Chancery Court last week tackled disputes involving merger litigation, insider trading allegations, books and records demands, advancement proceedings, fiduciary duties, public benefit corporations and more.

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