Apple Gets High Court Review Of Epic Case Sanctions

By Bryan Koenig

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to take up Apple's challenge to a California federal court contempt order against it for violating a ban, won by Epic Games, on company policies that barred app developers from steering users to outside payment options.

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Roblox Addiction Judge Wonders 'Where We Are As A Society'

By Craig Clough

A California judge overseeing a suit accusing Epic Games, Roblox and Microsoft of addicting children to video games wondered aloud Tuesday "where we are as a society" — though the comment was directed not at America's youth, but rather the state of the law when considering a motion to compel arbitration.

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Meta Social Media Addiction MDL Headed For August Trial

By Hailey Konnath

A California federal judge has mostly denied dueling motions for summary judgment in litigation brought by multiple states claiming Meta intentionally designed its products to be addictive, rejecting Meta's attempts to ditch the case and teeing it up for an August advisory jury trial.

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Authors Ask Calif. Court For Win In AI Training Copyright Case

By Elliot Weld

Several authors suing artificial intelligence firms Databricks and Mosaic ML have asked a California federal judge for a favorable ruling on their claims of direct copyright infringement for what they say was the mass ingestion of their works for AI training, saying the companies' conduct was "undoubtedly substitutive and plainly harmed the market" for their books.

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SAG-AFTRA Wants House Panel To Advance AI Deepfakes Bill

By Elliot Weld

The president of actors union SAG-AFTRA spoke to a congressional subcommittee Tuesday to press the need for a bill to allow for the removal of deepfakes from the internet, framing the advent of digital replicas of people as a fundamental alteration in the methods of human interaction that cannot be ignored by lawmakers.

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FCC Set To Streamline Info On Broadband 'Nutrition' Labels

By Christopher Cole

The Federal Communications Commission next month will consider revamping broadband "nutrition" labels of cable service performance crafted during the Biden administration to purportedly make them less confusing, according to a Tuesday blog post.

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FCC Plans To Build 'Superband' With Major Spectrum Auction

By Christopher Cole

The Federal Communications Commission plans to vote on whether to auction 160 megahertz of spectrum for new wireless services at its July meeting, part of an envisioned "superband" of prime midband airwaves ready for commercial use by 2030.

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ITC Funding Disclosure Rule Mostly Draws Support

By Dani Kass

The U.S. International Trade Commission's proposal to require litigation funding disclosures in intellectual property investigations received near-universal approval from those who provided feedback, receiving pushback only from an organization representing litigation funders and a nonpracticing entity.

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Calif. Will Lock In Biz Tax Credit Limit, Halve Min. Tax For LLCs

By Maria Koklanaris

California will expand its sales and use tax base to include prewritten software, make permanent its business tax credit limit and halve the $800 minimum tax for limited liability companies, under the last budget that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed as the state's chief executive.

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Dems Grill NTIA Head Over Stalled BEAD Applications

By Nadia Dreid

The BEAD program was on everyone's mind on Capitol Hill when National Telecommunications and Information Administration head Arielle Roth appeared before a House subcommittee Tuesday morning for an oversight hearing, with Democrats questioning her about when states could expect to get their money.

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Brief

Canada, Germany Pledge Closer Cooperation On Chips

By Dylan Moroses

Canadian and German officials signed a joint declaration committing to work together on policy matters involving semiconductor supply chains, according to a Tuesday news release by the Canadian government.

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Trump Loses Bid To Remove Copyright Office Leader For Now

By Ivan Moreno

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to let the Trump administration remove U.S. Copyright Office leader Shira Perlmutter for now, leaving in place a D.C. Circuit order that allows her to keep leading the office while her lawsuit challenging her firing proceeds.

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High Court Remands Geofencing Cases In Wake Of New Rules

By Parker Quinlan

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered Texas' highest criminal court and the Eleventh Circuit to take fresh looks at a pair of criminal convictions in light of the justices' ruling this week that geofence warrants demanding smartphone users' location data are "searches" under the Fourth Amendment.

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Judge Rejects Uber's Bid To Strike Location Tracking Patents

By Theresa Schliep

A California federal court has declined to invalidate a pair of location tracking technology patents asserted against Uber Technologies Inc., disagreeing with the company's claims that the patents are abstract and finding instead that each covers a "technical solution to a technical problem."

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UNC Escapes Bias Suit From Native American Ex-Professor

By Grace Elletson

A federal judge tossed Tuesday a Native American professor's suit claiming the University of North Carolina declined to renew his contract because he was a vocal critic of the institution, ruling he failed to rebut UNC's argument that he lost his job for changing course material without permission.

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Atlas Data's Daniel's Law Notices Not Spam, Judge Rules

By Emily Sawicki

A New Jersey federal court has found that Atlas Data Privacy Corp.'s flurry of thousands of takedown notices do not constitute a "spam attack," dismissing counterclaims brought by database providers alleging that the company was abusing a New Jersey judicial privacy law in violation of state and federal statutes.

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Cellspin Settles Challenges To Its Patents At PTAB

By Adam Lidgett

Three companies that challenged a series of Cellspin Soft Inc. patents for publishing data on websites have settled their disputes at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board after the board agreed to review the patents earlier this year.

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Texas Court Sends 4 Asbestos Suits Out Of MDL Court

By Spencer Brewer

A Texas appeals court on Tuesday found that multiple families of people who died following diagnoses of asbestos-related malignancies can remand their cases back to the courts they initially filed in, saying the multidistrict litigation rules do not apply to their cases.

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SpaceX, Feds Say Texas Is Proper Venue For Land Swap Suit

By Ganesh Setty

A D.C. federal court on Tuesday ordered expedited briefing over motions by SpaceX and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking to transfer to the Southern District of Texas a lawsuit from environmental groups challenging their land-exchange deal there.

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Gibson Dunn, White & Case Lead KKR's $4.2B EDF Biz Deal

By Lauren Berg

Private equity firm KKR & Co., represented by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, announced Tuesday a $4.2 billion agreement to acquire the North America renewable power business operated by EDF Group, advised by White & Case LLP.

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Digital Realty Pays $3.5B For Blackstone Data Center Shares

By Nate Beck

Digital Realty, represented by Latham & Watkins LLP, will pay $3.5 billion to acquire a stake in three Blackstone data centers fully leased to hyperscalers in northern Virginia, according to an announcement from the companies.

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SEC, CFTC Fine 2 Firms $5M For Off-Exchange Trades

By Sydney Price

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have fined an online brokerage technology company and a customer support company accused of participating in improper, off-exchange contract offerings.

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Last 'Big 6' Advertiser Settles FTC Group Boycott Claims

By Bryan Koenig

The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement Tuesday resolving claims that Havas Media Group USA LLC colluded with other advertising agencies to demonetize "disfavored political viewpoints" using brand safety standards, making Havas the last of the industry's "Big Six" to cut deals in the sweeping campaign against alleged censorship of conservatives.

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Ex-Google Engineer Can't Undo Trade Secrets Conviction

By Cara Salvatore

A California federal judge rejected a former Google engineer's argument that prosecutors withheld proper notice of their trade secrets charges by burying him in paper, saying this happened only because he misappropriated "such a large volume of documents."

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Ex-Palo Alto Insider Trader Avoids Prison After 9th Circ. Trip

By Bonnie Eslinger

A California federal judge resentenced an ex-Palo Alto Networks engineer Tuesday, 17 months after the Ninth Circuit upheld his securities fraud conviction but threw out his 18-month sentence, saying it now "doesn't make any sense" to incarcerate the 51-year-old given his failing health and family obligations.

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DOJ Defends Live Nation Deal As Boosting Competition Sooner

By Bryan Koenig

The Justice Department offered its formal defense of the controversial midtrial settlement that allowed Live Nation to keep its Ticketmaster subsidiary, telling a New York federal judge the deal frees up artists and venues much faster than any remedy state attorneys general could achieve through their jury win.

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Lessons For Cos. From Nixed Apple Watch Greenwashing Suit

A California federal court's recent decision in Dib v. Apple, a putative class action challenging carbon-neutral marketing statements made about the Apple Watch, provides meaningful guidance on how such claims may be defeated at the pleading stage, especially where they hinge on third-party verification, say attorneys at Mintz.

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Prediction Market Case Will Test US Insider Trading Reach

The insider trading case recently brought against Google employee Michele Spagnuolo may help clarify the extraterritorial reach of the Commodity Exchange Act and U.S. agencies' ability to police foreign trading in prediction markets, say attorneys at Akin.

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Series

Power To The Paralegals: Burnout As A Structural Problem

Law firm leadership can best retain their paralegals not by encouraging self-care, but by seeking top-down structural solutions for the quiet proliferation of responsibilities and the vicarious exposure to client trauma that particularly drive burnout in this vital role, says Erika Sneeringer at Brockstedt Mandalas.

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Goldstein Calls Gov't's Attack On Text Messages 'Hypocrisy'

By Jared Foretek

Lawyers for convicted SCOTUSblog founder Thomas Goldstein have rejected prosecutors' claims that the famed U.S. Supreme Court lawyer may have deleted messages between himself and his poker backers, calling the government "hypocritical" after it had previously argued that Goldstein could authenticate the messages if he took the stand at trial.

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Judiciary Dems Seek DOJ Replies Before Blanche Hearing

By Courtney Bublé

Ahead of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's confirmation hearing for the permanent position, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are demanding he provide answers to their outstanding oversight inquiries.

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Brief

Texas Federal Judge Requires Confirmation Of AI Checks

By Emily Sawicki

Attorneys and self-represented parties appearing before U.S. District Judge Ernest Gonzalez of the Western District of Texas are now required to certify that they have independently verified the contents of any filings created or edited using artificial intelligence.

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'Do Your Part,' Mass. Judge Chides Read Case Attys Post-Leak

By Cara Salvatore

A Massachusetts judge on Wednesday lectured counsel in the high-profile civil case against Karen Read, the Massachusetts woman acquitted of murdering her Boston police officer boyfriend, to honor their ethical obligations after sensitive information leaked on social media.

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U Of Ky. Appoints Controversial Dean Pick For Law School

By Courtney Bublé

U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove of the Eastern District of Kentucky will retire from the bench later this month to become dean of the University of Kentucky's J. David Rosenberg College of Law, a move that sparked controversy in the state.

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Wash. Atty Loses Bid For Jury In Dispute Over Bar Sanctions

By Emily Sawicki

A Washington lawyer sanctioned and disciplined for bringing a "frivolous" election suit in 2021 against then-Gov. Jay Inslee has lost her bid to have her ethics charges heard by a jury, with a state appeals panel finding no error in a trial court's ruling that it lacked jurisdiction to take on the disciplinary matter.

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Analysis

High Court's Guardrails Won't Ease Fight Over Trans Athletes

By Alex Lawson

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision permitting states to ban transgender athletes from girls' sports was written in simple terms, but attorneys tracking the issue see the ruling as a flashpoint for further litigation.

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Analysis

Plea Deals Get Scrutiny In 'Hunter,' But Justices Stay Cautious

By Brandon Lowrey

The shock for Mary Fan came almost immediately after she began her career as a federal prosecutor in Southern California in the mid-2000s.

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5 NYC Legal Service Provider Union Contracts Have Expired

By Andrea Keckley

The collective bargaining agreements for five New York City-based indigent defense and civil legal aid providers expired at the end of the day Tuesday as multiple unions reported outstanding points of contention in their negotiations.

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Watchdog Says DOL Needs Better Info Sharing Controls

By Kellie Mejdrich

The U.S. Department of Labor's lack of controls over information sharing between subagencies and nongovernmental entities, including law firms and legal advocacy organizations, may have unfairly advantaged those parties with privileged investigative information, an agency watchdog reported, though use of the practice has dropped off. 

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Roundup

The Top In-House Hires Of June

By Michele Gorman

Legal department hires during the past month included high-profile appointments at Bayer, Harley-Davidson and PBS. Here, Law360 Pulse looks at some of the top in-house announcements from June.

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