USPTO Chief Pushes 'New Narrative' Of Patent Benefits

Departing from circuit court rulings in five similar cases, the Ninth Circuit on Friday reversed a lower court's dismissal of a putative securities class action alleging Emulex Corp. concealed that Avago Technologies Ltd.'s $606 million acquisition offer was too low, holding that the investors’ claims require a showing of negligence rather than intentional wrongdoing.

Starbucks’ plan to hold training addressing implicit bias after the arrests of two black men at one of its Philadelphia stores stoked widespread outrage underscores how unconscious prejudice on the part of employees can have disastrous consequences. Here, experts share four tips for scrubbing implicit bias from the workplace.

A California federal judge on Friday approved a $33 million class action settlement resolving allegations that Fitbit Inc. hid problems with its fitness trackers and artificially inflated its stock price, but held off on awarding $8.25 million in attorneys’ fees, saying the amount “might be a little rich for this case.”

The Democratic National Committee filed suit Friday in New York federal court accusing the Russian government, the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks of conspiring to hack the Democratic Party and doom Hillary Clinton’s chances at the 2016 presidential election.

Newly minted New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law a bipartisan bill on Friday that bans offshore oil and gas drilling in the state’s waters and beyond, a move that comes as a rebuke to the Trump administration’s efforts to undo Obama-era restrictions on the activity in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The Fourth Circuit on Thursday refused to revive an antitrust suit accusing Black & Decker Corp. and a host of other table-saw makers of conspiring not to license technology from SawStop LLC, saying SawStop had waited too long to sue.

SunTrust Banks Inc. said Friday that a former employee may have made off with the personal information of roughly 1.5 million customers, potentially compromising details like client names, addresses, phone numbers and account balances.

Key Safety Systems Inc., which recently purchased Takata Corp.’s assets at a bankruptcy auction, cannot force an AIG unit to pay nearly $600,000 in post-judgment interest racked up in an underlying suit over a car crash, the Sixth Circuit affirmed on Friday.

Oil giant ExxonMobil said Friday it will appeal to the Second Circuit a New York federal judge's dismissal of its suit claiming the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts conspired to violate its free speech rights on climate change issues by investigating the company.

Wells Fargo will pay a $1 billion fine to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as part of settlements unveiled Friday resolving allegations of improper practices in the bank’s auto lending and mortgage divisions.

The D.C. federal judge overseeing the U.S. Department of Justice challenge to AT&T’s proposed $85 billion Time Warner purchase again asked Thursday about an arbitration offer key to defense efforts to appease government antitrust concerns, wanting to know what AT&T’s CEO envisions after that offer expires.

Trustees for investors who bought toxic residential mortgage-backed securities from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. before the 2008 financial crisis got an earful Thursday from a New York bankruptcy judge who fumed that their concerns over how to distribute funds from a $2.4 billion settlement could have been raised months ago.