'Lessons Learned': 9th Circ. Judge Doubts Uber Clawback Bid

By Dorothy Atkins

A Ninth Circuit judge doubted Uber's request Wednesday to claw back 42 documents inadvertently produced in sexual assault multidistrict litigation during its attorney-client privilege rereview, telling counsel, "At a certain point, we have to say stop, put your pencils down," and asking why this shouldn't be "an example of lessons learned."

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Analysis

Albright Left Key Issue In Billion-Dollar IP Fight Unanswered

By Dani Kass

In May 2025, then-U.S. District Judge Alan Albright watched a jury hold that VLSI Technology is controlled by Fortress Investment Group, but by the time he left the bench in August 2026, the judge had yet to decide whether that ownership would let Intel avoid billions of dollars in patent infringement verdicts.

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4th Circ. Judge Sees 'Big Brother' In Va. Social Media Limits

By Hayley Fowler

A Fourth Circuit judge Wednesday expressed concern with a Virginia law limiting children's access to social media, telling counsel for the commonwealth that the provision has a "Big Brother atmosphere" to it and suggesting he'd back the district court's injunction halting enforcement of the regulation.

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Ill. Judge Sets Evidence Hearing In Amazon TM Fund Fight

By Ivan Moreno

A Chicago federal judge on Wednesday set an evidentiary hearing for December to investigate whether a trademark lawsuit against 100 online sellers was used to obtain a court order directing Amazon to transfer more than $711,000 in frozen seller funds, some of which the company says were already subject to unrelated restraints.

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RealPage Says NY Can't Get Redo For Blocked Software Law

By Isaac Monterose

Property management software company RealPage Inc. has urged a New York federal court to stand by a prior ruling that temporarily blocked New York's attorney general from enforcing part of a state law that aims to stop landlords from using revenue management software that allows them to engage in rent price-fixing.

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Proskauer, Reddit Attys Called To Testify In Data-Scraping Suit

By Bryan Koenig

A New York federal judge on Wednesday called for live testimony from two Proskauer Rose LLP attorneys and Reddit's deputy general counsel as he weighs the law firm's bid to represent Perplexity AI in a lawsuit from Reddit, the firm's former client, over alleged data scraping.

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Roundup

Product Liability's Regulatory & Legislative Recap So Far

By Emily Field

Over the summer and early fall, lawmakers proposed measures aimed at putting safeguards around the rapidly growing industry of artificial intelligence, as public concerns over its safety climb in tandem. The new nominee to head the U.S. Food and Drug Administration also faced sharp queries over her views on vaccines and birth control.

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USPTO Removed 14,000 Invalid TM Filings In Fiscal 2026

By Theresa Schliep

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office took off more than 14,000 improper trademark filings from the Federal Register and removed more than 42,000 unused goods and services from registrations in the 2026 fiscal year, agency officials said at a webinar Wednesday.

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FCC Wants To Loosen Rules For Jamming Cell Phones

By Nadia Dreid

The Federal Communications Commission plans to legalize cellphone signal jamming, at least when it comes to phones that have been snuck into prisons, the head of the agency revealed at a Wednesday press conference in Arkansas.

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India, Mexico Take Step Toward Preferential Trade Deal

By Jack McLoone

Trade representatives from India and Mexico kicked off negotiations for a preferential trade agreement, the Indian government announced Wednesday, saying the hope is to increase trade between the countries.

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UMC Settles Suit Over Ex-Panasonic Chip Patents Before Trial

By Ryan Davis

Taiwanese chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp. notified a Texas federal court Tuesday that it has agreed to settle a suit alleging that it infringed seven semiconductor patents originally issued to Japan's Panasonic Corp., days before a trial was set to begin.

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Versata Wants Ford To Pay Interest Atop Restored $82M Award

By Adam Lidgett

Versata Software Inc. wants a Michigan federal court to tack on at least $37.7 million to a reinstated $82.3 million contract award against Ford Motor Co. and said the court should finalize that win while both sides prepare for a new trade secret damages trial.

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Meta Wants Ex-WhatsApp Security Head's Suit Axed For Good

By Bonnie Eslinger

Meta has urged a California federal judge to permanently dismiss a whistleblower retaliation suit from a former cybersecurity head for WhatsApp, saying the fourth version of his complaint repleads theories the court has tossed and still doesn't show the managers responsible for the alleged retaliation knew about his claimed protected activity.

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Caterpillar Autonomy Patents Cover Basic Tasks, Judge Told

By Elliot Weld

An autonomous solutions startup has told a Delaware federal judge that a set of patents asserted by construction equipment maker Caterpillar described basic tasks of directing where a machine moves, making them invalid under the U.S. Supreme Court's Alice test.

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Electronics Maker Says $48.5M Tax Suit Wrongly Tossed

By Jarek Rutz

Electronics manufacturer Flex Ltd. urged the Delaware Supreme Court on Wednesday to revive its bid for a $48.5 million tax distribution from its Nextracker Inc. spinoff, arguing the companies' agreements entitled it to the money, while Nextracker maintained Flex had agreed to bear the tax costs.

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RNC Files New Suit Over FCC's Campaign Ad Rates

By Hailey Konnath

The Republican National Committee, Republican Party of Texas and several Republican candidates Wednesday filed a fresh suit over the Federal Communications Commission's longtime requirement that broadcasters charge the lowest political ad rates for committees tied to candidates, calling it "a drag on First Amendment freedoms."

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BMW Hit With Patent Suit Over Wireless Charging Feature

By George Woolston

An electronics maker alleged in New Jersey federal court that the wireless charging feature in certain BMW models directly infringes its patent for a method of transferring power to a mobile device.

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Brief

Full Fed. Circ. Won't Eye Network IP Ruling In Amazon's Favor

By Elliot Weld

The full Federal Circuit on Wednesday declined to take up a split panel ruling that let Amazon escape infringement claims stemming from a network patent held by AlterWAN Inc.

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Q&A

U. Of Buffalo Prof Skeptical Of SpaceX-Tesla Merger Benefits

By Al Barbarino

Elon Musk made headlines when he said on Oct. 20 that a merger between SpaceX and Tesla, the two multitrillion-dollar companies he leads, would be a "good idea." But not everyone sees it that way. 

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Firehawk Defense Hits $1.4B Valuation After Latest Funding

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Defense technology company Firehawk Defense on Wednesday revealed that it reached a $1.4 billion valuation after closing its latest funding round with more than $150 million in tow.

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Watchdog Seeks Privacy Guardian In Character.AI Ch. 11 Sale

By Clara Geoghegan

The U.S. Trustee's Office said a Delaware bankruptcy judge must appoint a consumer privacy ombudsman to review the sale of artificial intelligence entertainment platform Character Technologies' assets, saying its Character.AI platform includes identifiable information from users' chats.

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FCC Inks $80K Consent Decree With Nexstar

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

Nexstar has entered into a consent decree with the Federal Communications Commission to pay $80,500 and implement compliance plans to end a probe related to the license renewals of several stations.

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FTC Probes Delta, Uber, Others Over Data-Driven Pricing

By Allison Grande

The Federal Trade Commission is pressing Delta, Uber, Target and a half-dozen other companies to detail how they're using personal data to set individualized pricing for consumers and compensation for workers, marking the latest escalation of the agency's growing scrutiny of the increasingly prominent business practice.

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Right-To-Repair Laws Create Manufacturer Compliance Maze

Without existing precedent to help interpret new right-to-repair laws, original equipment manufacturers must make careful judgments about how best to comply with conflicting state statutes — but several principles related to documentation, replacement products and more emerge from the patchwork, say attorneys at Faegre Drinker.

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Tort Liability When AI Goes Rogue: Product Liability

The recent Hugging Face cyberattack led by artificial intelligence agents, as well as reports from AI companies themselves, suggest that sometimes there may be no reasonable way to predict or prevent harm by rogue agentic AI — but product liability law could provide a remedy in some cases, says Donald Hawthorne at Carter Ledyard.

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3 Strategies To Reduce AI Sycophancy In Legal Work

The tendency of generative artificial intelligence models to tell users what they want to hear can reinforce attorneys’ confirmation bias when testing the strength of arguments, and it can’t simply be prompted away — but a few practices can help mitigate it, says Michael Ott at Ice Miller.

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Weil To Wind Down As Top Attorneys Abandon Firm

By Daniel Moritz-Rabson, Alex Wittenberg and Aebra Coe

Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, the restructuring powerhouse that led Lehman Brothers, Enron and General Motors through bankruptcy, told Law360 Pulse Wednesday that the firm is preparing to wind down operations.

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BigLaw Tip Middleman To Admit Role In $3.5M Trading Scheme

By Chris Villani

An alleged middleman in a sweeping scheme to trade off of deal information stolen from major law firms has agreed to plead guilty and potentially faces a prison term of nearly a decade, according to a plea agreement filed Wednesday in Massachusetts federal court.

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Judge Hellerstein, Gruff Moderator Of Major Cases, Dies At 92

By Pete Brush

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, a former litigator and sometimes impatient Manhattan federal jurist who presided over decades of high-profile cases that often came under close appellate scrutiny, died Wednesday at the age of 92.

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LA's Top Federal Prosecutor 'Unlawfully Serving,' Judge Finds

By Christine DeRosa

A federal judge has ruled that Los Angeles' top federal prosecutor isn't legally serving in the role and that he is disqualified from participating in or supervising two criminal prosecutions.

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BakerHostetler Malpractice Case To Expand With RICO Claim

By Emily Johnson

A Georgia federal judge has allowed a trustee who has accused BakerHostetler and an Atlanta-based attorney of legal malpractice to file an amended complaint after the trustee asked to add claims of Georgia RICO Act violations.

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Mich. Judge Weighs Toshiba Legal Bills Discovery Fight

By Melanie Dorsey

A Michigan federal judge on Wednesday questioned whether she needs to review specific objections to DTE Electric Co. and Consumers Energy Co.'s multimillion-dollar attorney fee request before deciding whether Toshiba Corp. must disclose its own legal bills and litigation expenses following a nearly $394.4 million jury verdict over a botched power plant overhaul.

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SC Gov.'s Counsel Still In The Running For Federal Judgeship

By Courtney Bublé

The chief legal counsel for South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is "being actively considered" for a federal judgeship, according to the White House, but it's not a done deal yet.

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