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WASHINGTON, D.C. — A split District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel denied the Federal Trade Commission’s motion for an emergency stay pending appeal of a lower court’s preliminary injunction enjoining the FTC’s civil investigative demand of Media Matters for America regarding its reporting alleging in part that advertisements on X, formerly known as Twitter, “appeared adjacent to antisemitic posts,” finding that the FTC did not show the likelihood of overturning the lower court’s finding of a link “between Media Matters’ protected speech and the Commission’s issuance of its sweeping and unexplained Demand.”
FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky workers’ compensation law binds the carrier responsible for the last injurious exposure to asbestos in a workers’ compensation case, even though that insurer did not participate in previous proceedings as a result of a change to the last date of exposure, the Kentucky Supreme Court said in affirming a lower appellate court ruling.
CHICAGO — The Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for Lands’ End Inc. and Lands’ End Outfitters Inc. (together, Lands’ End) in a suit brought by airline employees who alleged that their uniforms caused symptoms such as rashes, headaches and hair loss, finding that none of the employees’ experts proved causation and that the employees also failed to abide by the warranty's terms.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — There was no error in the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) construal of the claim term “coupled” in its consideration of a technology company’s patent describing an inductive charging system, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held Oct. 24, affirming PTAB’s findings that multiple claims of the patent were obvious due to prior art references.
NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a Texas federal judge’s grant of summary judgment to a law firm on its trademark claims against a man and two attorneys who made a fake website using the law firm’s name as part of a landlord-tenant dispute, but the panel vacated more than $2 million in damages and fees the judge ordered to be paid to the real law firm, finding that the judge failed to explain the basis for the award.
SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Oct. 23 reversed a lower court ruling that dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction a computer services company’s suit against a software company for its purported failure to comply with bid requirements for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) government in providing Microsoft software, finding that the software company was subject to personal jurisdiction because it “purposely availed itself of the privilege of doing business” in the CNMI.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court on Oct. 23 affirmed a ruling by the Pennsylvania Unemployment Compensation Board of Review that assessed a fraud overpayment in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits and a Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) fraud overpayment against a claimant who filed for benefits in both Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, finding that the board’s determination regarding the claimant’s intention when filing “for PUA benefits in Pennsylvania was supported by substantial evidence and cannot be set aside.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), through the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), on Oct. 23 released a new record of decision (ROD) adopting an oil and gas leasing program that officially opens roughly 1,563,500 acres in the Coastal Plain of Alaska for hydraulic fracturing in keeping with the executive order titled “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential” issued by President Donald J. Trump on the first day of his second term. Plans for oil and gas extraction in that region of Alaska have been the subject of much dispute and litigation across multiple presidential administrations.
NEW YORK — The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied a whistleblower physician’s petition for panel or en banc rehearing of the court’s ruling affirming a district court order denying his motion to reopen a federal and state false claims act violations suit alleging fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid billing by a health system.
PHILADELPHIA — Addressing a question of first impression, a split Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed an order denying a bid by third-party litigation funders to compel arbitration of an application for discovery for use in Germany because the discovery application does not qualify as a “civil action” under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), while a dissenting judge said the case should be remanded for a “second look.”
NEW YORK — In an Oct. 22 lawsuit filed in a New York federal court, Reddit Inc. says Perplexity AI Inc. and a trio of internet data scraping companies act as modern-day bank robbers by intentionally circumventing digital defenses and scraping the valuable content protected by those efforts.