'Who's Telling The Truth?' Musk-OpenAI Fight Goes To Jury

By Dorothy Atkins

Elon Musk's counsel urged a California federal jury during trial closings Thursday to find OpenAI breached its charitable trust aided by Microsoft Corp. and slammed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's credibility, while OpenAI's counsel argued Musk is trying to attack his competitor and urged jurors to ask themselves, "Who's telling the truth?"

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Authors' Attys Call Anthropic's $1.5B IP Deal Their 'Creation'

By Rae Ann Varona

Asked to justify a massive $187.5 million attorney fee request in litigation accusing Anthropic of copyright infringement, counsel for the plaintiff class of authors told a California federal judge Thursday that the resulting $1.5 billion settlement was "the creation of class counsel."

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Analysis

States Eye AI Ownership Laws To Fill Federal IP Gaps

By Ivan Moreno

States are beginning to test whether they can fill a gap left by federal copyright and patent law for works created with artificial intelligence, with Arkansas adopting a first-of-its-kind ownership rule for generative content and lawmakers elsewhere weighing their own proposals.

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Analysis

Insider Trading Case Shows BigLaw Associate Vetting Gaps

By Chris Villani

A BigLaw attorney who was able to move through three major firms while allegedly orchestrating a massive insider trading scheme may have been aided by relatively loose hiring practices for associates that firms may consider strengthening moving forward, recruiting experts told Law360.

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Algorithms In Senate Spotlight After Social Media Suit Losses

By Emily Field

Lawyers and parents on Wednesday urged lawmakers to strengthen protections for children online, focusing on the addictiveness of social media algorithms after two recent trial losses for Big Tech.

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NCR To Pay $48M To End Former Execs' Lifetime Benefits Suit

By Patrick Hoff

NCR Corp. will pay nearly $48 million to resolve a class action from former executives who alleged the software company broke its promise to send them annuity payments for life, the workers told a Georgia federal court.

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GoDaddy Overcomes Willfulness Finding From $170M Verdict

By Elliot Weld

A Delaware federal judge on Thursday found that GoDaddy had not willfully infringed two website patents held by Express Mobile Inc., thus sparing the company a verdict greater than the $170 million a jury found but still assessing prejudgment and postjudgment interest.

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Ogletree Fights Atty's Discovery Bid For DQ Push In Bias Suit

By Lynn LaRowe

A Georgia federal court should deny a bid for discovery aimed at disqualifying Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart PC from defending a security company against discrimination claims because the request stems from the plaintiff's lawyer's "personal grievances," the company said Thursday.

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House Panel Backs Bill To Recast Copyright Office Oversight

By Ivan Moreno

A U.S. House committee Thursday unanimously advanced a bill that would change how the Copyright Office chief is selected, requiring congressional leaders to recommend candidates while allowing the president to make the final selection — a shift that would give both branches of government a more direct role in choosing the agency's leadership.

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Senate Bill Would Require Network Outage Refunds

By Christopher Cole

A Democratic senator filed legislation that would require cable, satellite, internet and phone providers to refund customers for service outages lasting longer than four hours.

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New Bill Would Ban Chinese Point-Of-Sale Tech For DOD

By Nadia Dreid

The U.S. Department of Defense would be banned from using any Chinese-made point-of-sale technology — devices like those that allow people to tap their cards to pay — in its buildings, if one Republican congressman gets his way.

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Advocacy Groups, Dems Seek To Restore Digital Equity Fund

By Christopher Cole

A year after the Trump administration abruptly pulled funds set aside for digital equity grants, Democratic lawmakers are joining with public interest groups in trying to block a budget proposal that would permanently stamp out the program.

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AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon Join Forces To End 'Dead Zones'

By Hailey Konnath

AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon have reached an agreement in principle to form a new joint venture aimed at ending wireless dead zones in the U.S. by pooling resources to increase capacity, according to an announcement made Thursday.

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Fed. Circ. Upholds Mercedes, VW Headlight Patent Wins

By Adam Lidgett

The Federal Circuit on Thursday rejected an Israeli inventor's attempts to revive claims in a trio of patents covering adaptive headlights, handing wins to German automakers Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Porsche.

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Google Workers' Attys Get $12.5M In Race Bias Deal Final OK

By Lauren Berg

A California federal judge gave her final approval Thursday to a $50 million settlement that Google reached to resolve claims that it paid thousands of Black workers less than their white colleagues, and awarded the workers' attorneys their fee request of $12.5 million.

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Morgan Stanley Beats Chip Co. Investor's Stock Scheme Suit

By Gina Kim

A New York federal judge Thursday dismissed a stock manipulation suit against Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, finding its temporary policy requiring customers to buy shares in Israeli chipmaker Eltek Ltd. over the phone, which allegedly enabled improper trading, to be "neither manipulative nor deceptive."

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Apple Drops Bid To Transfer Fintiv Suit Due To Albright Exit

By Adam Lidgett

Apple Inc. has abandoned its request to transfer Fintiv Inc.'s trade secret theft and racketeering lawsuit from Georgia to Texas, citing U.S. District Judge Alan Albright's decision to leave the bench in the Western District of Texas.

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Squires Walks Back 5 More IPR Grants Over Inconsistent Args

By Theresa Schliep

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director John Squires has reversed earlier decisions granting five petitions for patent review, citing what he called the challengers' inconsistent positions in parallel proceedings and explaining that four petitions he denied in previous bulk orders were also rejected for the same reasons. 

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Squires Ends AMD Challenges At PTAB Over Sotera Issues

By Adam Lidgett

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director John Squires has terminated reviews of three data processing patents challenged by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. after finding AMD violated a stipulation to limit its invalidity arguments in court.

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Meta Starts NM Defense As Midtrial Win Bid Fails

By Cara Salvatore

A judge denied Meta a midtrial win Thursday morning over harm to underage social media users, prompting the social media giant to call an executive to begin building a defense case that platform changes requested by New Mexico's attorney general are unnecessary or even counterproductive.

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OpenAI Seeks To Overturn Injunction In 'IO' TM Fight

By Ivan Moreno

OpenAI is urging a California federal judge to overturn a preliminary injunction barring the company from using "IO" as a trademark for AI hardware, arguing it has abandoned all federal applications for the mark and has no plans to use it.

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Google Says DOJ's Search Win Can't Help Yelp Suit

By Bryan Koenig

Google urged a California federal judge on Wednesday not to let Yelp invoke the U.S. Department of Justice's D.C. search monopoly win in the local search provider's own antitrust case, arguing that the two lawsuits look at the interconnection between local and general search through fundamentally different lenses.

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Med Device Co.'s CEO Touted Growth, Netted $39M, Suit Says

By Zak Kostro

Medical device maker Integer Holdings Corp.'s former CEO overstated growth prospects of a manufacturing program for the company's electrophysiology business, inflating the firm's stock price and allowing him to reap a nearly $39 million "windfall net profit," according to an investor's derivative lawsuit in Texas federal court.

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'Pig Butchering' Crypto Scam Victim Seeks $962K From IRS

By Kat Lucero

An Ohio man told a district court that the Internal Revenue Service wrongly denied his tax deduction claim for a loss of over $800,000 from a cryptocurrency "pig butchering" scheme despite the extensive documentation of the fraud he said he provided to the agency.

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Text-Marketing Startup Sued In Chancery Over Stock Dilution

By Jarek Rutz

A Texas investor has sued text-marketing company Voxie Inc. in Delaware Chancery Court, claiming the startup pushed through a new financing round and charter amendment that stripped away negotiated protections for early preferred shareholders without getting their required approval.

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Brief

Fed. Circ. Won't Eye Part Of Columbia's Axed $600M IP Win

By Elliot Weld

The Federal Circuit said Thursday it won't take up Columbia University's request for it to reconsider a portion of a panel decision by the appellate court that discarded a nine-figure patent judgment against the maker of Norton antivirus software.

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3 Firms Steer Iridium, Aireon On $367M Aviation Satellite Deal

By Al Barbarino

Iridium Communications Inc. said Thursday it has agreed to acquire the remaining stake in Aireon LLC for nearly $367 million, consolidating full ownership of the space-based aircraft surveillance provider in a deal steered by three law firms.

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Akamai To Buy Cybersecurity Biz LayerX In $205M Deal

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Cybersecurity and cloud company Akamai Technologies Inc. on Thursday announced plans to acquire Tel Aviv-based tech company LayerX in a $205 million deal.

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Brown-Forman Rejects $15B Takeover Offer, More Rumors

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Alcoholic drink maker Brown-Forman rejected rival Sazerac's $15 billion takeover offer; fintech Digital Asset is seeking a $2 billion valuation with its latest funding round; and shoemaker Skechers has upped its offer to settle an investor lawsuit.

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Sterne Kessler, Thomson Reuters Launch Patent Eligibility AI Tool

By Matt Perez

Intellectual property boutique Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox PLLC announced it has partnered with Thomson Reuters Corp. to develop an artificial intelligence workflow within CoCounsel Legal to analyze patent eligibility under Section 101.

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Ed Tech Co. Conscious Content Nears Ch. 11 Plan OK

By Hilary Russ

The bankrupt education technology company Conscious Content Media on Thursday neared confirmation of its Chapter 11 reorganization plan, after a Delaware judge said he will grant his approval once documents are finalized for $20 million of exit financing.

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Rural Carrier To Pay $80K For Breaking FCC Rules

By Aneeta Mathur-Ashton

A rural telephone company in Colorado has agreed to pay $80,000 and create a compliance plan to resolve a Federal Communications Commission probe into whether it provided unauthorized service.

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Verizon's Array Buy Gets Green Light From FCC Staff

By Christopher Cole

Verizon secured approval Thursday from the Federal Communications Commission to buy up spectrum assets of the former rival UScellular, now known as Array Digital Infrastructure Inc.

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FINRA Official Says Cooperation Credit Updates Incoming

By Sarah Jarvis

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's head of enforcement said Thursday that the self-regulating watchdog of brokers will update the credit it offers to firms for cooperation and remediation, amid a broader, ongoing series of efficiency initiatives.

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Nexstar Offers A Cautionary Tale On State-Level Deal Scrutiny

State-enforcement challenges to the $6.2 billion Nexstar-Tegna merger remind legal practitioners that federal approval isn't always sufficient to deliver certainty on closing, integration and timetable assumptions, says Brett Story at Britehorn Securities.

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New Cuba Sanctions Raise Risks For Foreign Banks, Cos.

President Donald Trump's bold move leveling secondary sanctions against Cuba expands enforcement risk for foreign banks and companies with no U.S. nexus, signaling that non-U.S. businesses should reassess related transactions, counterparties and exposure as regulators test this broader authority, say attorneys at Troutman.

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AG Watch: Reconciling 2 Maryland Data Privacy Statutes

In-house counsel should map the interplay between the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act's strictly necessary standard to deliver a requested service, and the Protection From Predatory Pricing Act's exemption of consent-based pricing within loyalty programs, before the state attorney general begins enforcement on the latter in October, says Erek Barron at Mintz.

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Framing AI Risk Management In The Art World

With gallery professionals indicating a widening gap between operational adoption of artificial intelligence and cultural acceptance of AI as an art medium, certain intellectual property, privacy and governance considerations are becoming critical for art industry stakeholders, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.

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Series

Playing Basketball Makes Me A Better Lawyer

My grandfather used to say "I wear your jersey" as shorthand for wholly committing to support someone with loyalty and integrity — ideals that have shaped my life on the basketball court and in legal practice, says Tracy Schimelfenig at Schimelfenig Legal.

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DOJ Asserts Broad Power In BigLaw Executive Order Appeal

By Jared Foretek

A Trump administration attorney told the D.C. Circuit on Thursday that the courts have no authority to review the president's decision to revoke someone's security clearance for any reason, including race, religion, or even refusal to pay a $1 million bribe.

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Trump's 8th Circ. Pick Clears Senate Panel Vote

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump's nominee for the Eighth Circuit, who represented the president in the cases brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, advanced to the full Senate on Thursday.

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Thomas Urges Defense Of Constitution At Judicial Conference

By Carolina Bolado

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas urged attendees at the Eleventh Circuit Judicial Conference on Thursday to "stand up" for the U.S. Constitution and to see the positives in the country, despite its flaws, on its 250th birthday.

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Fenwick Hit With FTX Suit In DC Over $525M Losses

By Emily Lever

A group of former FTX customers has sued Fenwick & West LLP in federal court in Washington over its work representing FTX from 2018 to 2022, seeking to recover more than $525 million for losses stemming from the cryptocurrency exchange's collapse.

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NYC Bar Endorses Random Audits For Law Firm Accounts

By Emily Sawicki

The New York City Bar Association's Professional Discipline Committee on Thursday threw its support behind a statewide bill to institute a random audit program for law firm financial accounts.

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Lover's Ex-Wife Fights Sinema's Request For Therapy Notes

By Abigail Harrison

A bid by former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to unearth notes and communications from a therapist working with her lover's ex-wife should be summarily denied, as the ex-wife, Heather Ammel, told a North Carolina federal court Thursday that the request is a clear overreach.

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8th Circ. Backs Dismissal Of Horse Breeder's Malpractice Suit

By Tom Lotshaw

The Eighth Circuit said a federal judge was right to dismiss a malpractice suit a Minnesota horse breeder brought against Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP and one of its former attorneys for mishandling malpractice cases against three other firms.

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