9th Circ. Partially Lifts Block On Calif. Kids' Privacy Law

By Allison Grande

The Ninth Circuit on Thursday scrapped part of an injunction halting a groundbreaking California law requiring social media platforms to bolster privacy protections for children, finding that the tech trade group behind the lawsuit wasn't likely to succeed on its First Amendment challenge to the statute's coverage definition and age estimation mandate.

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Musk Banker Tells Jury Twitter Held Up Takeover Deal

By Bonnie Eslinger

An ex-Morgan Stanley banker who advised Elon Musk on his $44 billion Twitter acquisition testified Thursday in a trial seeking billions for investors claiming Musk tanked the social media company's stock to disrupt the takeover, saying Twitter was the one that obstructed the deal.

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Social Media 'Lions' Hunted Plaintiff Like Gazelle, Jury Told

By Craig Clough

The plaintiff's attorney in a bellwether trial accusing Meta Platforms Inc. and Google LLC of harming children's mental health encouraged a California jury during closing arguments Thursday not to buy the defendants' focus on his client's difficult childhood, saying it only weakened her to their social media "addiction machine" like a vulnerable gazelle being hunted by lions.

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Meta To Face Sanctions Bid Over Addiction MDL Privilege Log

By Dorothy Atkins

School district plaintiffs and attorneys general have told a California federal judge they plan to seek sanctions against Meta Platforms Inc. in the social media addiction multidistrict litigation for the tech giant's "extremely belated production" of over 73,841 documents downgraded off privilege logs, months after fact discovery closed.

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US Chamber Report Warns Of Risks To IP Protection

By Adam Lidgett

While the U.S. has ranked at the top of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's list measuring how countries worldwide are enforcing intellectual property laws, the group said problems with free trade agreements and efforts to reduce pharmaceutical prices could cause problems on the horizon domestically.

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Analysis

IP Notebook: TM Use Fight, Popeye, Kurt Cobain

By Ivan Moreno

This edition of emerging copyright and trademark cases and trends looks at an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court that questions the definition of trademark "use in commerce" under the Lanham Act and a battle over the use of "Popeye" as a trademark.

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USPTO Clarifies Design Patent Eligibility For Computer Icons

By Theresa Schliep

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued guidance Thursday saying computer-generated digital designs depicted in holograms, virtual reality and the like are eligible for design patents, noting that displaying images on a screen is no longer strictly necessary for patent protection.

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Beef Up Telecom Networks To Power AI, Tech Experts Say

By Christopher Cole

Sprawling artificial intelligence data centers will require larger shares of U.S. energy consumption in the coming years, but telecom networks also need more capacity and resilience if the U.S. wants to fuel an AI boom, a think tank said Thursday.

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Piracy Tops List Of Worries In Next-Generation TV Changeover

By Christopher Cole

Broadcasters have a lot on their plates as they move to the next TV standard, but chief among their worries will be protecting content from piracy, a security group formed by the major networks told the Federal Communications Commission.

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EU Antitrust Officials Targeting 'Entire AI Stack'

By Bryan Koenig

The European Union's top antitrust official said Thursday that bloc enforcers are casting a wide net as they look at the ways artificial intelligence companies may try to anticompetitively boost themselves over rivals, including underlying training models and needed power and cloud computing infrastructure.

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Justices Told Fed. Circ.'s 1-Line Orders Flout Loper Bright

By Elliot Weld

A lighting company has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take a look at a Federal Circuit decision that affirmed the invalidation of various claims in its LED patents, saying the circuit's one-line orders without explaining the court's reasoning violate the justices' decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

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CBP Clears Redesigned Innoscience Chips After ITC Case

By Adam Lidgett

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has found that modified versions of Innoscience's semiconductor chips no longer infringe an Efficient Power Conversion patent, after the U.S. International Trade Commission blocked infringing imports.

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Meta Expert Says NM's Case Is About Normal Behavior

By Cara Salvatore

A psychology expert witness for Meta told a New Mexico jury on Thursday that the state's claims of social media mental health harm rely on pathologizing normal behavior as addiction-like.

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DraftKings Wants Emails Under Wraps In Voided Bet Suit

By Alex Lawson

DraftKings has asked an Indiana federal judge to redact its emails with a betting technology company while it looks to fend off a class action from bettors alleging that they were unfairly denied payouts on successful NBA wagers.

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UiPath Execs Hid Risks, Ditched $394M+ In Stock, Suit Alleges

By Jarek Rutz

A UiPath Inc. shareholder has filed a derivative lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court accusing the company's top executives and directors of misleading investors about slowing growth and intensifying competition in the robotic process automation market while insiders sold hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of stock.

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Lenovo Faces Class Suit Over Early-Morning Marketing Texts

By Zak Kostro

Technology company Lenovo unlawfully sent marketing text messages early in the morning to potentially thousands of people and might owe up to $1,500 in damages for each unwanted solicitation, according to a putative class action in California federal court.

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Valve Faces 'Loot Box' Gambling Suits After NY AG's Action

By Ben Adlin

On the heels of the New York attorney general's accusations that Washington-based Valve Corp. promotes illegal gambling through its popular video game franchises, gamers filed two putative class actions in Seattle federal court similarly targeting the entertainment giant's use of "loot boxes."

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PayPal Execs Hit With Derivative Suit Over 2027 Forecast

By Sydney Price

PayPal executives and directors were hit with a shareholder's derivative suit accusing them of damaging the company with comments about the strong growth trajectory for its branded checkout segment that the investor said turned out to be untrue.

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Cogent CEO's Stock Pledges Spark Derivative Suit

By Emilie Ruscoe

The CEO and board members of internet service provider Cogent Communications Holdings Inc. face shareholder derivative claims the CEO improperly collateralized his commercial real estate portfolio with his stake in the company, causing trading prices to plummet when he was forced to sell off those shares amid financial distress.

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Icahn Outbid By $7B Caesars Offer, And Other Rumors

By Al Barbarino

Billionaire Tilman Fertitta is in exclusive negotiations to buy Caesars Entertainment for roughly $7 billion, superseding a competing all-cash offer from Carl Icahn's Icahn Enterprises, and Papa John's received a bid from Qatari-backed investment firm Irth Capital Management that could value the pizza chain at $1.5 billion. 

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SoftBank-Backed PayPay Downshifts To $880M IPO

By Grace Dixon

SoftBank Group Corp.-backed Japanese mobile payment service PayPay Corp. began trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday at $16 a share, below the range it had announced in early March as the war in Iran roils the market.

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4 Firms Guide Canadian Satellite Provider's $300M US IPO

By Isaac Monterose

MDA Space Ltd., a Canadian manufacturer of communications satellites, debuted Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange after it priced a $300 million initial public offering, guided by Skadden, Goodmans, Simpson Thacher and Osler Hoskin.

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Celsius Accuses Fireblocks Of 'Staggering' Crypto Negligence

By Dorothy Atkins

The Chapter 11 plan administrator for defunct cryptocurrency platform Celsius Network urged a New York bankruptcy judge Wednesday to order Fireblocks to respond to discovery demands over the cybersecurity company's alleged "staggering negligence" that led to the destruction of cryptographic keys and the loss of Ethereum tokens worth tens of millions of dollars.

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Ex-Judge Testifies About Alleged Forgeries In Amazon Case

By Kelcey Caulder

The former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia testified Thursday about the alleged forging of court documents, signatures and court stamps in a criminal case against a woman accused of defrauding Amazon out of $9.4 million through fraudulent invoices. 

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Brief

Democrats Vow To Oversee DOJ's Reported Binance Inquiry

By Sarah Jarvis

Three Democratic U.S. senators said Thursday that they will oversee a reported investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into potential Iran sanctions violations carried out on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

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GAO Says DOD Should Better Assess Contractors' Cyber Risk

By Ganesh Setty

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said on Thursday that the U.S. Department of Defense has not done enough to examine whether its hundreds of thousands of private contractors are properly following cybersecurity requirements.

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Partnership Says Data Centers Should Not Trigger $24M In Tax

By Anna Scott Farrell

A partnership's acquisition of data centers and improvements to a damaged building should not have triggered $24 million in additional taxes, it told the U.S. Tax Court in challenging adjustments by the Internal Revenue Service.

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Series

Podcasting Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Podcasting has changed how I ask questions and connect with people, sharpening my ability to listen without interrupting or prejudging, and bringing me closer to what law is meant to be: a human profession grounded in understanding, judgment and trust, says Donna DiMaggio Berger at Becker.

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4th Circ. Scolds Atty Suspected Of Using AI In Race Bias Suit

By Patrick Hoff

The Fourth Circuit has reprimanded an attorney suspected of using generative artificial intelligence to draft briefs in a race discrimination lawsuit against Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., warning that courts need to grapple with the technology as it "may soon become the norm."

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Democrats Seek Review Of Bondi's Role In Brother's Cases

By Alison Knezevich

Two Democratic lawmakers have asked the U.S. Department of Justice's inspector general to review whether Attorney General Pam Bondi "adequately recused herself" from cases involving clients represented by her brother Brad Bondi, who is a partner at Paul Hastings LLP.

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Sinema Says Tryst With Ex-Guard Not In NC Court's Reach

By Abigail Harrison

Former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, now a Hogan Lovells attorney, told a North Carolina federal court Thursday that a lawsuit alleging her cross-country affair with a former member of her security detail ended a 14-year marriage must be dismissed because the trysts occurred outside state borders.

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Judge Newman Takes Suspension Battle To Supreme Court

By Ryan Davis

Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman brought her fight against a suspension imposed on her by her colleagues to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, arguing that a lower court wrongly held that her challenges to the order are not subject to judicial review.

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Calif. Bar Says Internal Docs Bolster Claims Against Exam Co.

By Emily Sawicki

The State Bar of California has bulked up its breach of contract and fraud suit against the administrator of its "disastrous" February 2025 bar exam, filing an amended complaint in light of information it says it learned from internal communications unearthed amid discovery.

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Holyoak's US Attorney Nomination Advances

By Courtney Bublé

The nomination of Melissa Holyoak, former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, to be U.S. attorney for the District of Utah was sent to the full Senate on Thursday.

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CFTC Takes 1st Steps Toward Prediction Market Regulations

By Jessica Corso

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission opened the door Thursday to promised prediction market regulation, calling for public feedback on what such rules might look like while laying out the staff's view on the current rules that the platforms should follow in order to offer betting on sports and other events.

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