OpenAI Judge Pauses Trial To Probe Musk Attys On $97B Bid

By Dorothy Atkins

A California federal jury trial over Elon Musk's challenge to OpenAI's for-profit conversion paused on a precarious note Thursday after Musk's legal team failed to object to a document during Musk's cross-examination, and inadvertently opened the door to wide-ranging and potentially damaging evidence into Musk's $97.4 billion acquisition proposal.

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Google $700M Deal Nears Approval As Judge Questions Fees

By Bonnie Eslinger

A California federal judge said Thursday he would likely give final approval to Google's $700 million antitrust deal with states and consumers, but criticized the accompanying request for $85 million in attorney fees, calling the 100,000 hours the consumers' counsel said they spent on the case "grotesquely bloated."

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Netflix's 'Tiger King' Funeral Clip Was Fair Use, 10th Circ. Says

By Ivan Moreno

The Tenth Circuit on Thursday said Netflix Inc. made fair use of a minutelong funeral clip in its popular "Tiger King" docuseries, holding in a precedential opinion that the streaming platform's use of the footage was "significantly transformative," departing from its earlier ruling that reached the opposite conclusion.

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Jones Day Beats Sanctions Bid In $2M Fee Dispute

By Celeste Bott

An Illinois state judge has ruled that Jones Day can pursue punitive damages on several of its claims in a lawsuit alleging a former client made a series of unlawful transactions to avoid paying over $2 million in legal fees, and also denied sanctions sought by the ex-client against the firm.

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XAI's Suit Is 'Jurisdictional Bullying,' Musk Child's Mom Says

By Mike Curley

The mother of one of Elon Musk's children is urging a Texas federal court to throw out a suit from his artificial intelligence company alleging she breached its terms of service by suing it in New York, saying the case is "jurisdictional bullying" and trying to weaponize a forum selection clause to preempt her own case.

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Trump Says Fixed-Price Procurement Deals Will Be Default

By Madeline Lyskawa

President Donald Trump issued an executive order Thursday making fixed-price contracts the default for federal contracting, as a part of an effort to tackle "unpredictable costs, bloated overhead, and weak performance incentives," which the president attributed to cost-reimbursement contracts.

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New Mexico AG Calls Meta Threat To Leave State 'PR Stunt'

By Craig Clough

New Mexico's attorney general responded Thursday to Meta Platforms' threat to pull social media products from the state if an upcoming bench trial over potential mandates to increase child safety goes poorly for the company, calling it a "PR stunt" that is "showing the world how little it cares about child safety."

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FCC Establishes E-Rate Competitive Bidding Portal

By Nadia Dreid

Despite a partial dissent from the Federal Communications Commission's lone Democrat, the agency Thursday morning voted to approve a much-criticized plan to create a portal that consolidates bids for the E-rate program into one place.

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FCC Advances Plan To Clamp Down On Robocall Campaigns

By Christopher Cole

Calling illegal robocalls the No. 1 customer service issue facing the agency, the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday floated new rules that would require voice call providers to familiarize themselves with customers ahead of carrying their call traffic.

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Critical Mineral Restrictions Up 500% From 2009, OECD Says

By Jack McLoone

Global export restrictions on critical raw materials that are key for digital and renewable energy technologies increased fivefold between 2009 and 2024, which could lead to greater risks of supply chain vulnerabilities, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.

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Brief

Antenna Location Near Bermuda Sinks Ala. FM Station Bid

By Nadia Dreid

Selma, Alabama, will not be getting a new low-power FM station after the Federal Communications Commission said an error on the paperwork listed antenna coordinates that nearly reached all the way to Bermuda.

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Fed. Circ. Lets Stand Walmart's Alice Win Over Q Tech Patents

By Elliot Weld

The Federal Circuit said Thursday it will not rehear arguments that Walmart infringed three content-sharing patents that were invalidated under the U.S. Supreme Court's test for assessing whether patents cover abstract subject matter.

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Federal Circuit Upholds Google Win In Targeted Ad PTAB Case

By Adam Lidgett

The Federal Circuit on Thursday refused to undo Google's successful invalidation of claims in a targeted advertising patent owned by tech company Wildseed Mobile LLC, backing the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's finding that they were obvious.

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Ad Network Can't Ditch Suit Over Mobile App User Tracking

By Allison Grande

A California federal judge refused to toss a putative class action accusing mobile advertising network InMobi of unlawfully collecting detailed, sensitive information from users of apps that integrate its software tools, finding the plaintiff adequately alleged the technology functions as a "pen register" that's prohibited by the state's wiretap law. 

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Texas Panel Backs Amazon Over Delivery Photo Showing Child

By Rae Ann Varona

An Amazon package delivery driver did not invade a Texas family's privacy when a proof-of-delivery photo inadvertently included the family's naked minor child standing by the family's glass front door, a Texas appellate court ruled Thursday, affirming judgment in favor of the e-commerce giant in the family's tort lawsuit.

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Al Jazeera Fights To Nix Storm Video DMCA Claim For Good

By Gina Kim

Al Jazeera urged a California federal judge Thursday to permanently nix a claim alleging it knowingly, with intent to conceal infringement, embedded its watermark over videographers' extreme weather footage uploaded onto YouTube, arguing it never removed the videographers' copyright management information and that the parties' works are not identical.

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Google Says Ad Tech Rivals Can't 'Circumvent' Time Limits

By Bryan Koenig

Google has formally asked a New York federal judge to dramatically reduce antitrust claims from rival advertising placement technology providers, arguing they're clearly targeting policies they've known about for years and thus cannot get around a four-year statute of limitations pegged to a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit.

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Tribes Back Michigan In Robinhood, Polymarket Betting Fight

By Melanie Dorsey

A coalition of tribal gaming groups and federally recognized tribes won permission on Thursday to file briefs backing Michigan officials in suits by Robinhood Derivatives LLC and Polymarket US over sports-related event contracts, arguing the companies' claims threaten to upend tribal-state gaming regulation and siphon revenue from tribal governments. 

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Verizon Slaps Landowner With Counterclaims Over Tower Lease

By Nadia Dreid

Verizon is fighting back after a North Carolina federal judge declared that the lease for land a cell tower was constructed on is invalid, laying down a set of counterclaims accusing the landowner of using it to build up the site before canceling the lease.

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Roundup

NC Biz Court Bulletin: Corporate Raid, MV Realty Settlement

By Hayley Fowler

A major case settled in the North Carolina Business Court in April as new lawsuits emerged, including a complaint by health information technology company IQVIA Holdings Inc. accusing its former top brass of orchestrating a corporate raid and defecting to a competitor. In case you missed this story and others, here are the highlights.

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Brief

Northrop Grumman Drops Satellite Damage Suit In Va.

By Rae Ann Varona

A Virginia federal judge has approved Northrop Grumman's voluntary dismissal of its breach of contract lawsuit against Maryland-based subcontractor Element U.S. Space & Defense, which Northrop had accused of wrecking a $5 million solar satellite array and refusing to reimburse resulting damages.

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Monthly Merger Review Snapshot

By Matthew Perlman

A pair of door manufacturers ended a landmark private merger challenge, state enforcers are gearing up for a potential Live Nation breakup bid following a crucial jury win, and a separate group of states and DirecTV are challenging Nexstar's $6.2 billion deal for rival broadcaster Tegna.

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ADW Pursues $3B Takeover Of Meineke Owner, More Rumors

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Hedge fund ADW Capital is trying to scoop up Meineke owner Driven Brands in a $3 billion deal, SpaceX told investors that only Elon Musk has the power to remove himself as the leader of the space exploration giant, and technology services firm Virtusa Corp. is looking to raise $1 billion in an India initial public offering.

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5 States Join Bid To Block $6.2B Nexstar-Tegna Merger

By Rae Ann Varona

Five states on Thursday joined a coalition of others who sued to challenge Nexstar Media Group Inc.'s then-proposed $6.2 billion merger with Tegna Inc., alleging in an amended antitrust complaint that the currently frozen deal will eliminate consumers' choices for local news and diminish diversity in news coverage.

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McKool Smith's Patent Trial Legend Sam Baxter Retires

By Adam Lidgett

Sam Baxter of McKool Smith has announced his retirement after more than five decades in the legal profession, wrapping up a storied career as a patent litigator in the Eastern District of Texas.

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Buchalter Adds Engineer Turned Patent Atty From Mintz

By Andrea Keckley

Buchalter PC announced Wednesday that it has welcomed an engineer-turned-lawyer to its Los Angeles and San Francisco offices, touting her long-standing experience as a patent litigator and registered patent attorney.

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How Banks And Fintechs Can Build COPPA-Ready Youth Apps

Recent Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and state law activity expanding children's data protections underscore compliance considerations for bank-fintech partnerships offering digital financial tech products for youth, including age-gating, data minimization and parental control, says Erin Illman at Bradley Arant.

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Fed. Circ. In March: IPR And The Limits Of Retroactivity

The Federal Circuit recently ruled in Implicit v. Sonos that even though the clever retroactive correction of two invalidated patents theoretically should have changed the outcome of the inter partes review, the patentee had forfeited the right to rely on the correction — which is interesting for several reasons, say attorneys at Knobbe Martens.

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What's At Stake For Employers In Fight Over Visa Pause

For employers that rely on foreign talent, the Trump administration’s suspension of immigrant visa issuance for the nationals of 75 countries is creating practical problems, and a recently filed lawsuit challenging the pause could determine whether consular processing, for some, ceases to be an individualized process, says attorney Lisa Eisenberg.

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Series

Playing Magic: The Gathering Makes Me A Better Lawyer

The competitive card game Magic: The Gathering offers me a training ground for the strategic thinking skills crucial to litigation, challenging me to adapt to oft-updated rules, analyze text as complicated as any statute and anticipate my opponent’s next moves, says Christopher Smith at Lash Goldberg.

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Q&A

How Paul Clement Does It All

By Katie Buehler

For most lawyers, getting to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court is a once-in-a-lifetime event, but for a select few, it's a common occurrence. Clement & Murphy PLLC name partner Paul Clement is one of those lawyers. 

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Don't 'Throw' Young Attys Under Bus, Judge Warns Musk Atty

By Dorothy Atkins

The California federal judge presiding over Elon Musk's challenge to OpenAI's for-profit conversion criticized Musk's attorney Marc Toberoff on Friday for eliciting "waste of time" trial testimony into Musk's $97.4 billion acquisition bid, warning Toberoff he "shouldn't throw young lawyers under the bus" by not quickly acknowledging his role.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP leads this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after a California federal jury cleared Armistice Capital and two of its executives of class action claims that it pumped and dumped $250 million in Vaxart stock during the COVID-19 pandemic and violated federal securities law with insider trading.

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Whistleblower Says DOJ Rushed SPLC Indictment

By Courtney Bublé

A whistleblower has come forward to say a top U.S. Department of Justice official ordered prosecutors in Alabama to "rush" the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center despite concerns about the viability of the case, according to Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee.

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California High Court Rejects Dunn's Bid To Nix Suspension

By Adrian Cruz

The California Supreme Court has declined to review a California State Bar decision to impose a one-year stayed suspension on former State Bar executive Joseph Dunn.

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FTC, DOJ Say ABA Reliance Limits Law School Competition

By Matthew Perlman

The Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division told the Tennessee Supreme Court the American Bar Association's monopoly over law school accreditations is driving up the cost of legal education.

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Analysis

SEC's Corp. Governance Shift Puts Onus On States, Cos.

By Sarah Jarvis

Lawyers who work with clients on corporate governance matters had a warm response to a recent pledge from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins to let states handle such issues, saying the shift marks a return to the agency's historical approach and may spur increased activity among state regulators.

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Ex-Bondi Adviser Tapped As Fraud Task Force's Chief Lawyer

By Phillip Bantz

Ousted U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's former adviser is taking on a new role as general counsel for the White House's fraud task force.

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Roundup

GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

A pair of proxy advisory firms have sued two state attorneys general over laws they say impose burdensome requirements for issuing recommendations that go against corporate managers' wishes. Meanwhile, KPMG reports that legal is evolving into a key driver of business performance, and AI is a core component of the department. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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Roundup

The Top In-House Hires Of April

By Michele Gorman

Legal department hires during the past month included high-profile appointments at Intel, Colgate and Tripadvisor. Here, Law360 Pulse looks at some of the top in-house announcements from April.

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Roundup

UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Laura Stewart Liberty

The past week in London has seen a Swiss energy trader bring a Financial List claim against shipping benchmarking company Baltic Exchange, law firm Slater and Gordon sued by a former client, Slack and Salesforce hit Microsoft with an antitrust claim, and Stephen Fry bring a personal injury claim after he broke bones falling off a stage. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

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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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