Judge Should Penalize Meta $40B In Latest Trial, NM Argues

By Cara Salvatore

The state of New Mexico asked a judge Thursday to penalize Meta $35 billion to $40 billion for statements that a jury found grossly misrepresented the social media giant's actual data privacy practices, while Meta argued no harm was proven and the damages should be in the $345 million to $3.45 billion range.

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Analysis

Fate Of Patent Awards Over $1B Shows Hurdles In Apple Case

By Ryan Davis

Taction Technology Inc. has secured the largest patent damages verdict in history with a $5.7 billion win against Apple Inc., but it may face an uphill battle to collect, since nearly every previous patent judgment over $1 billion was later reduced or overturned.

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Samsung Win Affirmed Over 'Scientifically Impossible' Patent

By Adam Lidgett

The Federal Circuit on Thursday found that wireless communications patent claims asserted against Samsung were invalid because they did not enable a skilled person to make and use the invention, ruling that "the claims explicitly cover a scientific impossibility that cannot be made or used by a skilled artisan."

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Calif. Judge Vacates Trump's $100K H-1B Fee Policies

By Britain Eakin

A California federal judge has vacated the implementing policies underlying President Donald Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee, saying the federal agencies charged with implementing the fee ran afoul of rulemaking procedures required by the Administrative Procedure Act.

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Google Beats Online Publishers' AI Overviews Antitrust Suit

By Craig Clough

A D.C. federal judge on Wednesday dismissed antitrust suits from Chegg Inc. and Penske Media Corp. against Google, finding that their central claims that the search engine giant coerces publishers into supplying free content for its artificial intelligence products "fail to get out of the starting gate." 

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Google Ad Tech MDL Teed Up For Trial Largely Intact

By Bryan Koenig

Gannett, the Daily Mail and a certified class of website publishers scored a major win with a New York federal court ruling largely refusing to let Google scrap antitrust allegations targeting its advertising placement technology business in sprawling multidistrict litigation.

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Trump Announces Judicial Noms For 5th Circ., NC

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he's nominating Todd Butler, a managing partner at Phelps Dunbar LLP, to serve as a judge on the Fifth Circuit. 

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Interview

Exit Interview: SEC's Hester Peirce On Crypto, Clarity And AI

By Jessica Corso

Outgoing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester Peirce doesn't mind being referred to as "Crypto Mom" for her work championing the industry, but she thinks investors should know: "The government is never your mom."

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Analysis

4 Questions About EU And Canada's Vow To Strengthen Ties

By Dylan Moroses

The European Union's invitation for Canada to become an associate member of the bloc raises questions about the potential practical and political ramifications of such an effort. From technical details on what that membership might look like to political obstacles and how the U.S. fits in, here are four questions facing the endeavor.

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Bipartisan Legislation Floated To Fight Foreign-Website Piracy

By Elliot Weld

The two chambers of Congress have introduced related legislation that would allow U.S. courts to direct internet service providers to block foreign criminal and piracy sites within the U.S.

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Calif. Gov. Pushes For More In Signing Bill Limiting CIPA Suits

By Allison Grande

California's governor approved legislation Wednesday to block private litigants from bringing lawsuits under one provision of the California Invasion of Privacy Act, while urging the Legislature to keep working on efforts to expand this ban to include additional website tracking claims under the decades-old wiretap statute.  

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Fed. Circ. Backs Galderma In Injection Training IP Case

By Elliot Weld

The Federal Circuit on Thursday affirmed an order clearing Galderma SA of a medical training startup's accusations that it misappropriated trade secrets related to an injection training system and derailed what could have been a lucrative deal with Allergan PLC.

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Fed. Circ. Won't Rethink Vacating Contractor's $12.7M Award

By Ganesh Setty

The Federal Circuit said Thursday it won't disturb a unanimous three-judge panel's decision vacating a roughly $12.7 million award a software developer won against the federal government over unauthorized software copies, denying a panel rehearing and rehearing en banc.

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Army Beats $8.5M Claim Over Unexercised Contract Options

By Elaine Briseño

The Court of Federal Claims has dismissed an $8.49 million breach of contract suit, finding a payment addendum that could have obligated the U.S. Army to exercise the two remaining option years of the agreement was not included in the final contract.

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Trump Says Copyright Chief Can't Stay In Office Amid Appeal

By Adam Lidgett

The Trump administration is urging the D.C. Circuit to let it remove U.S. Copyright Office leader Shira Perlmutter, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision protecting Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook for now does not entitle Perlmutter to remain in office while her firing challenge proceeds.

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OpenAI Loses $1M Fee Award After Defeating SpaceXAI Suit

By Hailey Konnath

A California federal judge on Wednesday rejected OpenAI's request for $1 million in attorney fees after the company defeated a trade secrets suit from SpaceXAI, ruling that although Musk's artificial intelligence company's allegations ultimately fell short, they weren't objectively specious.

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Google Shakes Suit Over Search Engine Default Agreements

By Bonnie Eslinger

A proposed consumer class action accusing Google of monopolizing the online search market has been tossed by a California federal judge who said the plaintiffs didn't provide evidence showing that "better" options could have been available if Google hadn't struck default search engine deals with Apple and other companies.

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Meta Beats Calif. Drivers' DMV Data Collection Suit

By Mike Curley

A California federal judge has thrown out a proposed class action alleging Meta Platforms Inc. illegally obtained information from the state's Department of Motor Vehicles through its Pixel software, saying the plaintiffs leading the complaint haven't shown that Meta got any personal or embarrassing information.

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Zillow Users Can't Sue Over Microsoft Session Replay Tech

By Rachel Riley

A Washington federal judge has thrown out a proposed class action claiming Zillow used Microsoft browser tracking software that shared users' website activity with third parties, saying Wednesday that the plaintiffs went against a prior court order by inappropriately tacking two new claims onto the latest version of the lawsuit.

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Super Micro Fraud Suit Dismissed Over Vague Allegations

By Katryna Perera

Super Micro Computer has beaten, for now, a shareholder suit accusing it of violating a previous settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over accounting improprieties, with a California federal judge finding the allegations vague and lacking specificity.

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MLB Can't Bat Ticket Theft Suit To Arbitration, Judge Says

By Bonnie Eslinger

A New York federal judge denied a Major League Baseball unit's bid to compel arbitration in a proposed class action over digital security breaches that allegedly led to the disappearance of game tickets from the MLB app, finding it failed to show plaintiffs agreed to terms containing the arbitration clause.

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Apple Says YouTube's Bad Protections Doom AI Scraping Suit

By Bonnie Eslinger

Apple urged a California federal judge Thursday to toss a proposed class action brought by YouTube creators alleging it violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provisions by scraping copyrighted videos to train its AI tools, arguing there was no circumvention and any access controls fell outside the DMCA because they were "ineffective."

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Tech Co. AdHawk's Investors Sue Over $15M Merger Earnout

By Jarek Rutz

Two shareholders of adHawk Inc. have sued the flooring software company's former directors and officers in Delaware Chancery Court, accusing the insiders of diverting $15 million from a roughly $159 million sale to Cyncly and giving themselves access to equity in the buyer that other stockholders were denied.

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Brief

Customers Ask 9th Circ. To Halt Paramount-Warner Bros. Deal

By Nadia Dreid

Streaming service customers are asking the Ninth Circuit to step in and stop Paramount Skydance's planned $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery until a court can decide if their antitrust suit challenging the merger will be dismissed.

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Monthly Merger Review Snapshot

By Matthew Perlman

State enforcers settled their case challenging Paramount Skydance's planned $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, while the U.S. Department of Justice probes Fox's planned $22 billion deal for Roku and regulators review massive deals in the energy and railroad sectors.

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Kirkland Tapped To Replace HSF Kramer In Power Plant Ch. 11

By Clara Geoghegan

West Virginia coal plant Omnis Pleasants LLC has hired Kirkland & Ellis LLP in its contentious Delaware Chapter 11 after Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP's previous work for key creditors disqualified it as debtors counsel.

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DOJ's RealPage Deal Doesn't End States' Antitrust Claims

By Matthew Perlman

A North Carolina federal court has refused to toss antitrust claims from state enforcers accusing RealPage of providing software that allows residential building owners to inflate rents, despite RealPage's settlement in the case with the U.S. Department of Justice.

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Amazon Pays $8.25M Over Slowed Delivery In 2 DC ZIP Codes

By Gina Kim

Amazon agreed to pay out $8.25 million to resolve allegations it secretly left out certain ZIP codes in the Washington, D.C., area from Prime Delivery services for years while charging those residents the full Prime membership price, Washington, D.C.'s attorney general announced Thursday.

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Uranium Finance Jury Sees 'I Did A Crypto Heist' Chat

By Stewart Bishop

A federal jury in Manhattan was shown chat threads Thursday that purport to show a cybersecurity consultant saying "I did a crypto heist," in a computer fraud and money laundering trial over what prosecutors say was a short-lived hacking campaign that drained $53 million from crypto exchange Uranium Finance.

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Calif. AG Latest To Subpoena OpenAI Over Hacking Risks

By Allison Grande

California Attorney General Rob Bonta revealed Thursday that he has served an investigative subpoena on OpenAI as part of his office's broader probe into cybersecurity risks posed by the company's artificial intelligence models, including a recent incident where its autonomous AI agents hacked third-party platform Hugging Face. 

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Snell & Wilmer Nabs IP Pro In California From Morgan Lewis

By Gina Kim

Snell & Wilmer announced Thursday it has hired a former Morgan Lewis & Bockius attorney to join its intellectual property group, with a focus on life sciences and technology. 

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What Anthropic Security Ruling Means For Gov't Contractors

In light of the D.C. Circuit ruling backing the U.S. Department of Defense's decision to remove Anthropic's Claude artificial intelligence models from its supply chain, there are a few steps contractors can take in response, including assessing whether to eliminate use of Anthropic products entirely, say attorneys at Blank Rome.

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AG Watch: How Maryland Is Meeting The Data Center Age

At a time when states are competing for data center investment, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown's upcoming people's counsel appointment may shape the state's most consequential debates over electric rate increases, grid investment and the costs of the ongoing energy transition for years to come, says Erek Barron at Mintz.

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Calif. AV Notices Reshape Crash Data Preservation, Discovery

California's new autonomous vehicle noncompliance notice process does not decide fault or establish that an AV is unsafe, but it can create a contemporaneous regulatory record and accelerate decisions about what crash-related data must be preserved, reviewed and potentially disclosed in litigation, says attorney Lem Garcia.

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Testing AI's Promise For Large-Scale Document Review

Our document-review comparison of attorneys' responsiveness and issue coding decisions versus predictions generated by artificial intelligence across 1,600 documents suggests that these tools can offer a reasonable and reliable basis for improved discovery workflows, provided lawyers understand where guardrails are needed, say attorneys at Redgrave.

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UCLA Law Is Latest DOJ Target Over Race Bias In Admissions

By Dorothy Atkins

The U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division accused the UCLA School of Law of discriminating against white and Asian students in its admissions process in a letter sent to the school's counsel Thursday, following multiple other similar letters that the DOJ sent to other higher-education institutions.

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DOJ Outlines New Corporate Fraud Enforcement Priorities

By Phillip Bantz

Federal prosecutors "must place great weight" on a new list of factors when considering potential charges in corporate fraud cases, including whether the matters involve government programs, threats to national security or immigration offenses, according to a memo released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice.

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Blackburn Holds Up White House's Tenn. Judge Pick

By Courtney Bublé

The White House is standing by its nominee for a federal judgeship in the Eastern District of Tennessee amid a holdup from Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., a White House official confirmed to Law360 on Thursday.

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Richards Layton Atty Confirmed To Join Del. Chancery Bench

By Rose Krebs

Delaware's Senate on Thursday confirmed a Richards Layton & Finger PA director to a 12-year term as a vice chancellor on the Chancery Court.

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FBT Gibbons Beats DQ Bid In Suit Over Cigna Payments

By George Woolston

A New Jersey state court judge has rejected a plastic surgery practice's bid to disqualify FBT Gibbons LLP from representing Cigna and a group of employer-sponsored health plans in its suit over the insurer's alleged underpayments, finding the bid appears more of an effort to gain an advantage rather than one to protect the interests of any client.

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Roundup

The Top In-House Hires Of September

By Michele Gorman

Legal department hires during the past month included high-profile appointments at MSG Sports, Nestle and the Associated Press. Here, Law360 Pulse looks at some of the top in-house announcements from September.

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Judge Reinstates Rogoff As Seattle US Atty After Trump Firing

By Rachel Riley

A Washington federal judge issued an order from the bench on Thursday reinstating Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, finding that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he fired him in July.

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