Instagram's top data scientist told a Tennessee jury Monday that the company's goal is to increase the amount of "sessions" by teens, not their raw amount of time in the app, though he admitted the latter metric has been on the rise.
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TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2026 Law360 iOS App Law360 Android App Follow Law360 on Facebook Follow Law360 on LinkedIn Follow Law360 on Twitter

TOP NEWS

Instagram Wants Teen 'Sessions,' Not Time, Tenn. Jury Told

By Cara Salvatore

Instagram's top data scientist told a Tennessee jury Monday that the company's goal is to increase the amount of "sessions" by teens, not their raw amount of time in the app, though he admitted the latter metric has been on the rise.

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AGs Want Meta's Privilege Claims Reviewed In Bellwether Trial

By Dorothy Atkins

During a break in a jury trial Monday over states' claims Meta hid social media's harm, states' counsel urged a California federal judge to require Meta to re-review all of its attorney-client privilege designations, arguing that "it seems actually logically impossible" that Meta described the wrong standard in only a single document.  

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Zillow Avoids Trial As Redfin Agrees 'To Reenter Market'

By Bryan Koenig

The Federal Trade Commission told a Virginia federal judge Monday that it had settled its lawsuit challenging a rental listings syndication deal that the agency said amounted to a $100 million payout by Zillow for the smaller Redfin listing service to exit the market.

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Founder Of Crypto Startup Block Bits Convicted Of Fraud

By Bonnie Eslinger

A California federal jury on Monday held that cryptocurrency startup founder Japheth Dillman deceived Block Bits investors by falsely claiming the company's auto-trading platform was up and running, following a trial in which his co-founder testified against him under a plea agreement.

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DivX Fights Uphill For New Patent Trial After Loss To Netflix

By Craig Clough

A California federal judge indicated Monday he is not likely to grant video compression technology company DivX's request for a new trial over anti-copying and image-quality patents after a jury cleared Netflix of infringement in March, disagreeing that he gave faulty jury instructions by using the word "covers" instead of "includes."

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DOJ Seeks To Beat UC Researchers' Challenge Of Grant Axings

By Madeline Lyskawa

The U.S. Department of Justice argued on Friday that the Trump administration should prevail over University of California researchers' challenges of the termination of their grants, telling a California federal judge that the First Amendment doesn't apply to competitively awarded grants.

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Google Says Publishers Can't Get 'Fake Privilege' Discovery

By Bryan Koenig

Google urged a New York federal judge not to grant additional discovery to a group of publishers targeting its advertising placement technology dominance in a wider multidistrict litigation, arguing claims of insufficient detail into corporate policies allegedly hiding evidence are belied by the volume of information already cited.

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Spirit Data Sale To Google Draws Objection From Springshot

By Emily Lever

Software company Springshot Inc. has filed a limited objection to the $10 million sale of Spirit Aviation Holdings' business data to Google LLC for artificial intelligence training, saying some of the data being sold could potentially constitute Springshot's intellectual property.

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POLICY & REGULATION

Dems Seek GAO Review Of Federal Agencies Hacking Americans

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, ranking member of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement, have requested that the Government Accountability Office conduct a comprehensive review of federal law enforcement agencies' hacking of Americans' electronic devices.

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Feds Propose New $103K Fee For H-1B Visa Petitions

By Ganesh Setty

The Trump administration proposed a new rule Monday that would impose a roughly $103,000 fee for all H-1B visa petitions subject to government caps, separate from the $100,000 fee President Donald Trump announced last year via executive proclamation.

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USPTO Anonymous Reexam Proposal Spurs Concern, Praise

By Ryan Davis

A U.S. Patent and Trademark Office proposal to effectively end the ability to be completely anonymous when requesting patent reexaminations drew numerous concerns from industry and attorney groups, as well as supportive remarks from patent owners and calls for the office to go further.

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FCC's Trusty Sees Need For Fresh Look At Universal Service

By Christopher Cole

Since taking a seat on the Federal Communications Commission more than a year ago, Olivia Trusty says her travels around some of the most rural parts of the country have convinced her of a need to bring the FCC's universal service programs up to date.

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Aviation Cos. Urge FCC To Pull Ligado Network Order

By Nadia Dreid

The FCC ought to revoke its controversial 2020 order giving Ligado Networks permission to build a mobile satellite network because the company won't be able to build it in a way that meets the "stringent conditions" the agency gave it, a coalition of groups and companies tells the agency.

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Biz Lobby Urges OECD To Cut Platform Reporting's Threshold

By Kevin Pinner

The OECD's model rules for platforms to report information to tax authorities shouldn't have a transaction-based threshold that excludes some sellers from platforms' reporting requirements, the official lobby for businesses at the organization said in response to a consultation.

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Brief

AT&T, Duke Energy To Arbitrate Pole Rate Dispute

By Nadia Dreid

AT&T and Duke Energy are headed for arbitration in the hopes of settling their dispute over the rates the power company charges the telecom behemoth for pole attachments, the Federal Communications Commission has said.

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LITIGATION

11th Circ. Affirms $9M Loss For Chinese Circuit Board Maker

By Carolina Bolado

The Eleventh Circuit has affirmed a $9.2 million judgment for the U.S. distributor of a Chinese circuit board manufacturer after finding that the manufacturer's lawsuit did not put the distributor's U.S. affiliate on notice it was being sued for its Hong Kong-based affiliate's unpaid invoices.

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Judge Orders $245M In Guardant Damages In DNA Patent Suit

By Elliot Weld

A judge has boosted what Guardant Health Inc. owes in a case in which it was found to have infringed two TwinStrand Biosciences Inc. patents covering methods of lowering the error rate in DNA sequencing, bringing the total to $245 million.

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DaVita, Patients Get Early Nod In $15M Data Breach Deal

By Hailey Konnath

A Colorado federal judge has given the initial green light to DaVita Inc.'s proposed $15 million settlement with millions of past and present patients who claim the healthcare company didn't adequately protect their personal information, which was exposed in an April 2025 breach, according to an order issued Friday.

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Dolce & Gabbana Privacy Suit Dismissed For Lack Of Pa. Ties

By P.J. D'Annunzio

A Pennsylvania federal judge has thrown out putative privacy class claims alleging clothier Dolce & Gabbana tracked its website visitors' activities, ruling that the case did not have a strong enough connection to Pennsylvania to maintain jurisdiction.

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Social Media Giants Denied Pause Of Calif. Kids Algorithm Law

By Emily Field

A California federal judge on Friday again refused to block the Golden State law that bars social media companies from using algorithmic feeds to deliver content to children without parents' consent, telling Meta, Google and TikTok that predictive algorithms that show "interesting" content aren't protected free speech.

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Software Co. Can't Arbitrate Conn. Judicial Branch Dispute

By Matt Perez

A Massachusetts software company on Friday lost its bid to force the Connecticut Judicial Branch into private arbitration over claims it was not fully paid for working on a court case management system decades ago, with a panel concluding the state's waiver of sovereign immunity allowed only a Superior Court lawsuit.

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Calif. Appeals Court Signals Wiretap Law Applies To Trackers

By Allison Grande

A California state appeals court appears poised to declare that website tracking technologies generally qualify as pen registers under the state's wiretap law, while finding that the specific trackers at issue in a lawsuit against Variety Media LLC don't fall under this definition because they don't identify the destination of intercepted communications. 

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Facebook Investors Move For Class Cert. After High Court Test

By Jessica Corso

Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP and Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP are pushing to lead a class of Facebook Inc. investors who claim to have lost billions of dollars in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, saying they are well-positioned to spearhead the case after defeating a U.S. Supreme Court challenge.

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Microsoft Says Consumer Must Arbitrate Tariff Refund Claims

By Rachel Riley

Microsoft urged a Washington federal judge Friday to force arbitration of an Xbox buyer's proposed class action alleging the company seeks to pocket tariff refunds meant for customers — or toss the case entirely — contending console prices change over time "for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with tariffs."

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Advocacy Groups Seek To Join ABC's Case Against FCC

By Christopher Cole

Two media advocacy groups said Monday they will seek to join a lawsuit that ABC recently filed in D.C. federal court against the Federal Communications Commission alleging First Amendment violations.

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Residents Ask To Drop SpaceX From Data Center Noise Suit

By Isaac Monterose

A proposed class of Mississippi residents told a federal court that they are OK with SpaceX exiting their lawsuit, which accused a trio of companies led by Elon Musk of causing a public nuisance with the noise from power generators at three AI data centers.

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AI Co. Perplexity Moves To Trim CNN Infringement Suit

By Rae Ann Varona

Perplexity has urged a New York federal judge to significantly pare down CNN's lawsuit accusing the artificial intelligence developer of infringing the network's stories, videos and images without permission, saying it can't be held liable for automated responses that its "answer engine" gives to user prompts.

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WikiHow Says ChatGPT Spits Out How-To Guides Verbatim

By Rae Ann Varona

WikiHow has accused OpenAI in New York federal court of mass-scale copying of the how-to instruction site's copyrighted articles to train ChatGPT and generate near- or full-verbatim reproductions of wikiHow's "distinctive" instructional articles.

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GoDaddy's Hidden Discount Strategy Hurt Investors, Suit Says

By Katryna Perera

GoDaddy and its top executives have been hit with a proposed shareholder class action alleging they failed to tell investors that the company introduced a discounted promotional price for its one-year dotcom domain contracts to attract new customers, and that the program was slowing total bookings and revenue growth.

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Battery-Maker Investor Sues Brass Over $200M DOE Grant

By Jarek Rutz

A Microvast Holdings Inc. stockholder has sued the battery-maker's current and former directors and executives in the Delaware Chancery Court, alleging they breached their fiduciary duties by misleading investors about a $200 million federal grant and the progress of a Tennessee manufacturing plant.

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Brief

10th Circ. Won't Revisit Netflix's 'Tiger King' Fair Use Win

By Ivan Moreno

The Tenth Circuit will not reconsider its ruling that Netflix's use of a 66-second funeral clip in its hit "Tiger King" docuseries was fair use, leaving intact a decision that rejected copyright claims brought by the videographer who shot the video.

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DEALS

Neobanking Biz Hits $1B Valuation After Series C Round

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Artificial intelligence-powered stablecoin neobanking platform Fasset on Monday revealed that it reached a $1 billion valuation after closing its latest funding round with $68 million in tow.

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3 Firms Build Biotech Merger With $150M In Private Funding

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Biopharmaceutical company Werewolf Therapeutics and clinical-stage biotechnology firm Ambros Therapeutics have agreed to merge in an all-stock deal built by three law firms, and includes $150 million in private funding.

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ENFORCEMENT

Sports Media Co. CEO Will Pay $250K To End SEC Fraud Suit

By Katryna Perera

Icaro Media Group's CEO has agreed to pay $250,000 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve claims that he used the company to fraudulently raise $22 million from investors through a false narrative about the planned launch of a sports media smartphone application.

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EXPERT ANALYSIS

Patent Ruling Shows Concrete Tech Solution Key To Eligibility

The Federal Circuit’s recent Ceiva Opco v. Amazon.com decision offers an important reminder that software-related inventions can remain patent eligible when they claim a concrete technological solution to a specific problem, says Irah Donner at Manatt.

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LEGAL INDUSTRY

6th Circ. Says Judge Can't Escape Teen Mock Arrest Suit

By Susan Smiley

A Sixth Circuit panel on Monday allowed to proceed a Michigan federal lawsuit filed against a Detroit judge who handcuffed a 15-year-old student and subjected her to a mock trial after she fell asleep in his courtroom, ruling that judicial immunity does not protect him.

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Ex-DOJ Fraud Attys Switch To Civil Focus At Boutique Firm

By Phillip Bantz

Criminal fraud prosecutors commonly pursue careers as white collar defense lawyers after exiting the U.S. Department of Justice, but a group of ex-DOJ lawyers who have recently joined national litigation boutique AXS Law Group are embarking on a path less traveled.

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Choate Brings On Former Willkie CFO In Boston

By Andrea Keckley

The former chief financial officer at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP has left to take on a new role as Choate Hall & Stewart LLP's CFO.

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Anthropic Appoints New General Counsel

By Matt Perez

Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic, which is behind the chatbot Claude, has appointed a new general counsel, with her predecessor moving into a role coordinating with international governments.

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Florida AG Slams Bar Complaint Against DHS Counsel

By Madison Arnold

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wrote to the executive director of the Florida Bar to criticize a recent complaint made to the bar against James Percival, general counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, for attacking judges.

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Greenberg Traurig Adds Morgan Lewis Employment Attorney

By Madison Arnold

A veteran Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP employment attorney in Miami has moved her practice to Greenberg Traurig LLP, the firm announced Tuesday.

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Cooley Life Sciences Atty Joins Foley & Lardner In San Diego

By Adrian Cruz

Foley & Lardner LLP announced that a life sciences attorney with over 30 years of experience has jumped to the firm's San Diego office as a partner from Cooley LLP.

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Firm Revenue Climbs 12.4% In First Half Of 2026

By Daniel Moritz-Rabson

Record billing rate gains, strong demand and increased productivity fueled a successful start to the year for the legal industry, according to a report released Tuesday.

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Colo. Judge Ships $8.3M Messner Reeves Fraud Suit To Utah

By Zach Dupont

A Colorado federal judge granted a motion Monday from law firm Messner Reeves LLP to move a lawsuit accusing the firm of stealing more than $8 million as part of a fraudulent loan scheme to Utah after finding the venue was the proper forum to litigate the claims.

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COMPANIES IN TODAY'S NEWS

ABC Inc.

AST & Science LLC

AT&T Inc.

Adeia Inc.

Amalgamated Bank

Amazon.com Inc.

American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations

American Intellectual Property Law Association

Anthropic PBC

Apple Inc.

Association of Flight Attendants-CWA

Business Software Alliance

Cable News Network Inc.

Cornell University

Costco Wholesale Corp.

Council for Innovation Promotion

Cox Communications Inc.

DaVita Inc.

DivX LLC

Duke Energy Corp.

Epic Games Inc.

Gannett Co. Inc.

GoDaddy Inc.

Google LLC

Guardant Health Inc.

Hearst Corp.

Hulu LLC

Instagram Inc.

Intellectual Property Owners Association

Inter IKEA Systems BV

Janus Henderson Group PLC

JetBlue Airways Corp.

Ligado Networks LLC

LinkedIn Corp.

Los Angeles Times

McKinsey & Co. Inc.

Meta Platforms Inc.

Microsoft Corp.

Nasdaq Inc.

Netflix Inc.

Nintendo Co. Ltd.

Nokia Corp.

Northeastern University

OpenAI OpCo LLC

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

Outcome Health

Princeton University

RA Capital Management

Rhapsody International Inc.

Ryanair Holdings PLC

SBI Holdings Inc.

Sony Music Entertainment Inc.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

Tesla Inc.

The Florida Bar

The New York Times Co.

The Software & Information Industry Association

TikTok Inc.

Trulia Inc.

TwinStrand Biosciences

University of Virginia

Wells Fargo & Co.

YouTube Inc.

Zillow Group Inc.

LAW FIRMS IN TODAY'S NEWS

AXS Law Group

Axinn

BBB Attorneys

Bailey & Glasser

Baker & Hostetler

Bernstein Litowitz

Blank Rome

Bursor & Fisher

Butler Snow LLP

Chase Law & Associates

Choate Hall

Cleary Gottlieb

Clement & Murphy

Cooch & Taylor

Cooley LLP

Covington & Burling

DLA Piper

DTO Law

Davis Polk

Davis Wright Tremaine

Farella Braun

Fieger Law

Fisher & Phillips

Foley & Lardner

Freshfields

Gibson Dunn

Gordon Rees

Greenberg Traurig

Gupta Wessler

Hecker Fink

Hogan Lovells

Irell & Manella

Kaplan Fox

Kellogg Hansen

Kilpatrick Townsend

King & Spalding

Kirkland & Ellis

Latham & Watkins

Lieff Cabraser

Lynch Carpenter

Manatt Phelps

Messner Reeves

Milbank LLP

Milberg PLLC

Miner Barnhill

Mitchell Silberberg

MoloLamken

Morgan Lewis

O'Melveny & Myers

Orrick Herrington

Pacific Trial Attorneys

Perkins Law

Perkins Law Group PLLC

Podhurst Orseck

Richard Tamor

Robbins Geller

Robbins LLP

Ropes & Gray

Rothwell Figg

Sidley Austin

Spencer Fane

Sterne Kessler

Stranch Jennings

Strauss Borrelli

Susman Godfrey

Wagstaff & Cartmell

Waltzer Wiygul

Warshaw Burstein

Weitz & Luxenberg

Wilkinson Stekloff

Willkie Farr

WilmerHale

Young Conaway

GOVERNMENT AGENCIES IN TODAY'S NEWS

California Department of Justice

California Supreme Court

Connecticut Attorney General's Office

Connecticut Judicial Branch

Delaware Court of Chancery

Executive Office for Immigration Review

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Federal Communications Commission

Federal Trade Commission

Florida Supreme Court

Food and Drug Administration

Homeland Security Investigations

National Endowment for the Arts

National Foundation on the Arts & Humanities

National Institutes of Health

National Science Foundation

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

State of Tennessee

Tennessee Attorney General's Office

U.S. Attorney's Office

U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California

U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

U.S. Department of Defense

U.S. Department of Energy

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

U.S. Department of Justice

U.S. Department of Labor

U.S. Department of Transportation

U.S. District Court for the Central District of California

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

U.S. Senate

U.S. Supreme Court

United States District Court for the District of Colorado

United States District Court for the District of Utah