Google Reaches Deal With Epic For Android App Changes

By Matthew Perlman

Google has agreed to make a number of changes to the way apps are distributed on Android devices in a deal with Epic Games, potentially resolving their yearslong antitrust battle after Google asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case.

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FTC Wants 'Tainted' Drs. Testimony Barred From Merger Case

By Bryan Koenig

The Federal Trade Commission wants a D.C. federal judge to bar a pair of outside doctors and consultants from vouching for Edwards Lifesciences' planned JenaValve acquisition, arguing in a filing made public Tuesday that claims of minimal communication between the physicians' counsel and the companies were "at best, misleading."

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Mamdani Taps Ex-FTC Chief Lina Khan For NYC Transition

By Lauren Berg

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday named an all-woman transition team, including former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who attracted the ire of tech giants and corporations by spearheading the Biden administration's aggressive antitrust enforcement.

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DOJ Clears Google's $32B Deal To Buy Cybersecurity Co. Wiz

By Lauren Berg

Google's plan to acquire Wiz for $32 billion and integrate the growing cloud security platform into Google Cloud has cleared the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust review, the tech giant confirmed Wednesday.

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AGs Defend Bid To Intervene In DOJ's HPE Merger Deal

By Bryan Koenig

More than a dozen Democratic attorneys general have assailed the Justice Department and Hewlett Packard Enterprise for fighting their bid to peek behind the controversial settlement clearing HPE's $14 billion purchase of Juniper Networks, telling a California federal judge that Congress created court oversight for deals just like this.  

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Chancery Won't Let Pfizer Block $10B Novo Bid For Metsera

By Jarek Rutz

A Delaware vice chancellor Wednesday refused Pfizer Inc.'s emergency bid for a temporary restraining order to block Metsera Inc. from closing a now $10 billion competing bid by Novo Nordisk for the GLP-1 weight-loss drugmaker, saying Pfizer hasn't demonstrated Metsera's board acted in bad faith or that the company would suffer immediate irreparable harm.

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Apple, Google CEOs Can't Yet Be Deposed In Antitrust Suit

By Nadia Dreid

Consumers accusing Google of hatching a deal with Apple to make it the default search engine on the iPhone will not be allowed to depose Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai as part of their antitrust case accusing Google of suppressing rival search engines.

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Microsoft Wants To Weigh In On Google Search Fixes, Too

By Matthew Perlman

Microsoft is urging a D.C. federal court to make sure that the limits imposed on Google in the U.S. Department of Justice's search monopolization case prevent the search giant from inking multiyear default agreements and that they reach new types of generative artificial intelligence products.

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Mallinckrodt Faces Antitrust Suit Over Oxycodone Supply Halt

By Matthew Santoni

A generic-drug company has claimed in a lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania federal court that Mallinckrodt LLC and a subsidiary have cut off the supply of active ingredients necessary to make competing drugs that include oxycodone and acetaminophen.

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Pharmacy Groups Urge 8th Circ. To Back Ark. PBM Limits

By Gianna Ferrarin

A pair of pharmacy trade groups is urging the Eighth Circuit to allow Arkansas to enforce a law barring pharmacy benefit managers from owning pharmacies, arguing the law is a rational response to "abusive" PBM practices.

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Helium Financial Says Fired Employees Nabbed Trade Secrets

By Ben Adlin

Two former employees of Washington-based Helium Financial Group LLC stole trade secrets and used them to start their own wealth management firm after they were fired, allowing them to create "a 'clone' of Helium's business model in startup form," Helium claimed in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Seattle federal court

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HSR Data Shows Most Deals Exit Antitrust Review Unscathed

Merger activity is up, enforcement is down and the vast majority of deals are emerging from U.S. federal antitrust review in one piece, new 2024 fiscal-year Hart-Scott-Rodino data shows, meaning companies should not shy away from deals based on a perception that recent antitrust enforcement has been unusually aggressive, says Amanda Wait at Michael Best.

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Post-Genius Landscape Reveals Technical Stablecoin Hurdles

The Genius Act's implementation has revealed challenges for mass stablecoin adoption, but there are several factors that stablecoin issuers can use to differentiate themselves and secure market share, including interest rate, liquidity, and safety and security, say attorneys at Olshan Frome.

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AI Litigation Tools Can Enhance Case Assessment, Strategy

Civil litigators can use artificial intelligence tools to strengthen case assessment and aid in early strategy development, as long as they address the risks and ethical considerations that accompany these uses, say attorneys at Barnes & Thornburg.

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Fired E-Biz Execs Sue Jackson Walker Over Judge's Romance

By Adrian Cruz

A pair of former executives at e-commerce company Volusion LLC have hit Jackson Walker LLP with the latest in a series of suits accusing the firm of legal malpractice stemming from the undisclosed romance between a former partner and a Texas bankruptcy judge.

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Senate Confirms Jones Day Partner To 9th Circ. Bench

By Courtney Bublé

The Senate voted 52-45 on Wednesday to confirm Eric Tung, a partner at Jones Day, as a judge on the Ninth Circuit.

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Judge Slams DOJ's 'Indict First' Strategy In Comey Case

By Jared Foretek

Federal prosecutors were given just over 24 hours to hand over all of the grand jury materials and anything seized under years-old warrants in the James Comey case when a Virginia federal judge said Wednesday that the government appeared to be pursuing an "indict first, investigate last" strategy.

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Robbins Geller's 'Eye-Watering' $28M Fee Bid Cut To $10.4M

By Katryna Perera

A California federal judge has rejected a $28 million attorney fee request from Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd as part of a $150 million investor settlement with Zoom, calling it an "eye-watering figure," and saying the firm can collect about $10.4 million instead.

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Fed. Judiciary Tackles Design, Need For AI Evidence Rules

By Jack Karp

Federal judiciary members wrestled Wednesday with the appropriate parameters of a proposed rule that would govern machine-generated evidence, while questioning the need for another proposed rule dealing with so-called deepfake evidence.

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After Spending Blitz, Pa. Judicial Election Turnout Booms

By James Boyle

Months of focused campaigning and an unprecedented blitz of spending on television ads helped serve to double the number of Pennsylvania voters who turned out on Tuesday to cast ballots over whether to grant new 10-year terms to three Democratic members of the state's Supreme Court.

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Mass. Justices Consider Raises To Address Counsel Shortage

By Julie Manganis

Justices on Massachusetts' highest court grappled at a hearing Wednesday with its ability to address an ongoing shortage of attorneys willing to represent indigent defendants, after lawyers in two of the state's busiest counties stopped taking cases in May in protest over the low pay compared with other states.

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