Stabenow's Farm Bill Includes ReConnect Program

By Courtney Bublé

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, released her framework of the Farm Bill on Wednesday, which includes a rural broadband program that advocates have been wanting to become permanent.

1 document attached | Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Broadcast Cos. Demand Oversight Of Sports TV Joint Venture

By Alex Lawson

Broadcasters and competition advocates on Thursday pressed lawmakers to hold hearings on the pay-television industry, warning that a planned sports streaming venture between Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery threatens to "dominate" the market.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Google Judge Ponders Search Engine's Might At Trial Closings

By Bryan Koenig

The quality of Google's search engine, and what it would take to actually challenge the company's grip on default placements on Apple browsers and Android phones, were top of mind Thursday for the D.C. federal judge weighing U.S. Department of Justice monopolization allegations.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Congress Wants More Data On Broadband Program's Value

By Nadia Dreid

The Affordable Connectivity Program — which is rapidly running out of money — was on everyone's tongues at a Senate subcommittee hearing on broadband affordability Thursday morning, with Democrats and Republicans agreeing on little more than the need for more data on how many Americans rely on the subsidy to stay online.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

New EU, Japan Initiative Looks To Boost Global Supply Chains

By Rae Ann Varona

Japan and the European Union on Thursday announced a new initiative aimed at alleviating the economic dependence countries may have on others for certain goods by boosting global supply chains through transparency and coordination with like-minded countries.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

NFL Throws Flag On Harvard Prof's Sunday Ticket Testimony

By Craig Clough

An attorney for the NFL urged a California federal judge Thursday to limit testimony from a Harvard law professor set to appear for the plaintiffs in an upcoming antitrust lawsuit over the Sunday Ticket television package, saying his expert report veers into impermissible legal opinions that will confuse the jury.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Huawei Can't Get VoIP-Pal Patents Axed Under Alice

By Adam Lidgett

A Northern District of Texas judge has shot down Huawei's motion that two VoIP-Pal.com patents on initiating mobile phone calls are invalid under the Alice standard for claiming only abstract ideas.

2 documents attached | Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Gilstrap Ships Altice IP Row To NY After $339M Google Verdict

By Adam Lidgett

A Texas federal judge has granted a bid from cable company Altice to transfer a case accusing it of infringing a Touchstream patent on mobile app streaming to New York federal court.

Opinion attached | Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Attys Due For Spam Suit Sanction, But Not $750K, Judges Say

By Greg Lamm

Class counsel's misconduct in helping instigate a spam text suit against stock-trading app Robinhood Financial LLC warranted sanctions, a Washington state appeals court panel ruled Thursday, but the judges said the $750,000 penalty went over the top in deterring the bad behavior.

Opinion attached | Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Digital Rights Nonprofit's Bid To Unseal IP Docs Is Too Late

By Lauren Berg

Electronic Frontier Foundation cannot unseal filings in a chipmaker's patent suit against Charter Communications Inc., a Texas federal judge ruled Thursday, saying the digital rights nonprofit's bid to intervene in the case came too late.

Order attached | Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Microsoft, Activision Seek Del. Court Patch For $68.7B Sale

By Jeff Montgomery

Microsoft Corp. and Activision Blizzard petitioned Delaware's Court of Chancery on Thursday for an order validating Activision's already closed but officially "defective" $68.7 billion sale agreement, arguing that the court pointed the two companies to a "solution for missteps in Delaware's General Corporation Law.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Recent Wave Of SEC No-Action Denials May Be Slowing

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in March granted no-action relief to Verizon and others on the grounds that a director resignation bylaw proposal would mean violating Delaware law, bucking recent SEC hesitation toward such relief and showing that articulating a basis in state law is a viable path to exclude a proposal, say attorneys at Winston & Strawn.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Don't Use The Same Template For Every Client Alert

As the old marketing adage goes, consistency is key, but law firm style guides need consistency that contemplates variety when it comes to client alert formats, allowing attorneys to tailor alerts to best fit the audience and subject matter, says Jessica Kaplan at Legally Penned.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Legal Industry Gains Jobs In April Following Downward Trend

By Tracey Read

The U.S. legal sector eased back into a positive trajectory in April, with a gain of 3,200 jobs compared with the previous month, according to preliminary data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Titan Of The Plaintiffs Bar: Boies Schiller's Sigrid McCawley

By Hannah Albarazi

Sigrid McCawley was barely back from parental leave with her fourth child in February 2015 when she flew to New York City to take on a case that would turn her life upside down, and change the world.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Q&A

NJ Judge Kugler Reflects On 32 Years Spent As Federal Jurist

By George Woolston

With the fates of his colleagues who didn't get the chance to enjoy retirement weighing on his mind, Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler decided this year it was time to call it a career on the bench in Camden, New Jersey, after three decades of service.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Graham Blasts Mass. Judge Nom For 'Radical' Policing Letter

By Courtney Bublé

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted a Massachusetts judicial nominee on Friday for failing to disclose prior to his nomination hearing that his name appears on the letterhead of a 2020 public statement issued in the wake of protests following the murder of George Floyd by police.

1 document attached | Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Judge In Trump's Georgia Case Raises $320K For Election Bid

By Chart Riggall

In his bid for election to his first full term on the bench, the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's Georgia election interference case is enjoying support from a broad swath of the Atlanta legal community, raising over $127,000 in the last three months.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Robbins Geller Attys To Take Stand In $8M Sanctions Dispute

By Bryan Koenig

A petroleum refiner will put current and former Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP attorneys on the stand May 7 in an extraordinary evidentiary hearing testing what the plaintiffs' lawyers knew about an analyst's now-discredited findings as they pursued since-nixed price-fixing claims.

1 document attached | Read full article » | Save to favorites »

California Judge Ousted For 'Willful,' 'Prejudicial' Misconduct

By Jake Maher

A California state judge has been removed from the bench after an investigation found that he conducted a campaign of retaliation against court employees he suspected of being "moles" in a probe against him and lied about his actions to investigators afterward.

Decision attached | Read full article » | Save to favorites »

Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Clement & Murphy PLLC and Yetter Coleman LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Fifth Circuit reversed a Texas federal court's $1.6 billion ruling against IBM in an operating agreement dispute with Houston-based software company BMC.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

A former general counsel testified Thursday in the criminal fraud trial of former Autonomy CEO Michael Lynch that the company's chief operating officer didn't want a whistleblower's claims to get into court, and a South Carolina man and his companies must pay the SEC nearly $24.9 million to settle claims that he misappropriated investors' money to make Ponzi payments. These are among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »

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

By Laura Stewart Liberty

The past week in London has seen rapper Ivorian Doll hit with a copyright claim, private members club Aspinalls file a claim against a Saudi sheikh, and Motorola Solutions file a claim against the British government on the heels of its dispute over losing a £400 million ($502 million) government contract. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

Read full article » | Save to favorites »