Judge Mulls If Google Could Still Vie To Be Default Search

By Bryan Koenig

A D.C. federal judge probed potential middle grounds Tuesday for how to give Google's search engine rivals a leg up against the company's monopoly, asking how to avoid a "duopoly" with Microsoft and if Google might be permitted to continue paying browsers and phonemakers for default placement.

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5th Circ. Hints Exclusivity Could End Tata's $168M Woe

By Spencer Brewer

A Fifth Circuit panel asked whether Tata Consultancy Services had taken trade secrets to solely build a product for a specific customer, questioning Tuesday whether to keep intact a $168 million judgment finding Tata stole an IT company's technology concerning source code and life insurance software documentation.

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Apple Beats Claim Amber Alert On AirPod Hurt Boy's Hearing

By Rae Ann Varona

A California federal judge on Monday tossed a Texas mother's lawsuit accusing Apple Inc. of being responsible for her teenage son's permanent hearing loss after an Amber Alert allegedly rang through defective AirPods and ruptured his eardrums, saying a physician's expert opinion they leaned on was unreliable for proving causation.

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X Can't Escape Unjust Firing Claim In Severance Suit

By Irene Spezzamonte

Three former Twitter executives can proceed with their claim that Elon Musk and the company owe them millions in severance benefits after falsely claiming they were fired justly, a California federal judge ruled, pointing to another suit mirroring nearly identical allegations.

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CRT Buyers Want $3.7B In Damages After Price-Fixing Default

By Matthew Perlman

Groups of buyers in long-running litigation over an alleged conspiracy to fix cathode ray tube prices asked a California federal court for $3.7 billion in damages after a default judgment against Chinese electronics company Irico Group for failing to preserve evidence.

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Meta Seeks Punitives For NSO WhatsApp Hack As Trial Opens

By Dorothy Atkins

Meta's counsel told a California federal jury during trial openings Tuesday that Israeli spyware-maker NSO Group owes nearly $445,000 plus punitive damages for its "despicable" conduct hacking 1,400 WhatsApp users' devices, while NSO's counsel denied owing Meta anything and criticized Meta's case as a PR attempt to "own the narrative."

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FTC Defends John Deere Right-To-Repair Suit

By Nadia Dreid

Farm machinery-maker Deere & Co. is trying to get out of an FTC enforcement action using the same arguments that didn't help it escape multidistrict litigation accusing the company of breaking antitrust laws by restricting access to repair services, the government says.

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Analysis

Key Takeaways From Patent Office's New Denial Process FAQ

By Ryan Davis

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Friday released answers to an extensive list of frequently asked questions about its new process for deciding whether to deny patent challenges for discretionary reasons. Here's a look at some of the most significant details.

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Mexico Put On Latest USTR Priority IP Watch List

By Adam Lidgett

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on Tuesday issued its annual global intellectual property report that has placed close trading partner Mexico on its list of countries to keep the closest eye on.

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State Telecom Roundup: Funding Security Without The Feds

By Nadia Dreid

The Trump administration has made it clear that it expects states to take the reins regarding cybersecurity infrastructure and disaster preparedness and that the feds plan to step back, but not all states are equally prepared for that task.

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4th Circ. Rules Honeywell Royalty Fight Belongs In Fed. Circ.

By Adam Lidgett

The Fourth Circuit on Tuesday found that a fight over royalty payments between technology conglomerate Honeywell and its Japan-based rival should be kicked to the Federal Circuit, which has jurisdiction over all patent-related lawsuits.

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Deloitte, SCANA Investor Class Settle Suit Over Failed Project

By Gina Kim

Deloitte and a certified class of SCANA Corp. investors told a South Carolina federal judge Tuesday they've settled claims accusing the accounting firm of issuing audit reports that misled investors about the progress the utility company was making on a $9 billion nuclear energy expansion project that never came to fruition.

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Mercedes-Benz Wins Remand From Top PTAB Judges

By Andrew Karpan

A panel of the top judges at the patent board has agreed that Mercedes-Benz deserves another chance to invalidate a processor patent issued over a decade ago to engineers at Intel Corp. and later assigned to a company that's asserting it against the automaker and others.

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Meta Looks To Delete User Antitrust Claims Over Pay For Data

By Craig Clough

Meta urged a California federal court Monday to end antitrust claims from consumers alleging they should be paid for their data, saying flawed expert theories that doomed class certification also sink the entire case for the remaining individual plaintiffs.

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OKCoin Says Crypto Holders Can't Tie Firm To $2M Theft

By Sydney Price

Digital asset exchange OKCoin and its affiliates urged a California federal judge to dismiss a proposed class action accusing them of enabling cryptocurrency thieves, arguing the real cause of the plaintiffs' losses was the initial theft, not any actions by the exchange.

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North Georgia Healthcare Provider Sued Over Data Breach

By Kelcey Caulder

A regional healthcare provider and a collections agency have been hit with a proposed class action in Georgia federal court over allegations that their lax cybersecurity practices allowed hackers to steal the protected health information of patients during a July 2024 data breach.

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Brief

Apple Settles Harvard Profs' IPhone Night Vision Patent Suit

By Elliot Weld

Apple has agreed in principle to settle a suit brought by a startup company owned by two Harvard professors who claimed the tech giant infringed patents related to cameras that can render night vision images.

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Q&A

Sullivan M&A Chief Sees Opportunities Amid Tariff Turmoil

By Al Barbarino

After a rocky start to 2025, the mergers and acquisitions landscape is grappling with economic volatility, shifting trade policies and a complex regulatory environment. But even in a "choppy" market, there are always deals to be made, says Melissa Sawyer, global head of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP's M&A group and co-head of its corporate governance practice.

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Perkins Coie Leads 2 SPAC Listings Raising $300M Combined

By Tom Zanki

Two special-purpose acquisition companies, under similar leadership teams and represented by Perkins Coie LLP, began trading Tuesday after pricing initial public offerings that raised a combined $300 million. 

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FTX Ch. 11 Trust Asks To Keep Customer Info Confidential

By Jeff Montgomery

In a just-under-the-wire move, the FTX bankruptcy recovery trust has sought a seventh extension for a mid-2023 ruling by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware allowing confidential treatment of its 9 million customers' information, citing the data's continued value to the estate.

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2nd Circ. Not Sure FCC Fine Denied Verizon's Trial Right

By Christopher Cole

Second Circuit judges questioned Tuesday why the feds couldn't fine Verizon millions of dollars for location data misuse since the telecom carrier has the option of refusing to pay and demanding a jury trial if the U.S. Department of Justice comes to collect.

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SEC Abandons Investigation Into PayPal's Dollar Stablecoin

By Hailey Konnath

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped its investigation into PayPal's dollar-pegged stablecoin "without enforcement action," PayPal said in a disclosure filed Tuesday, the latest cryptocurrency probe abandoned by the agency under President Donald Trump's administration.

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3 Change Management Tools To Boost Compliance Efforts

As companies grapple with rapidly changing regulations and expectations, leaders charged with implementing their organizations’ compliance programs should look to change management principles to make the process less costly and more effective, says Liisa Thomas at Sheppard Mullin.

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The Rejection Of Probabilistic Tracing In Direct Listing Suits

Recent decisions following the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Slack v. Pirani have increased the difficulty of pleading Securities Act claims for securities issued in direct listings by rejecting the use of statistical probabilities to establish that share purchases were traceable to a challenged registration statement, says Jonathan Richman at Brown Rudnick.

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The 2025 Lawyer Satisfaction Survey

Law firms and the legal profession are facing new uncertainties, shifting the stress levels, economic pressures, and overall contentment of lawyers in private practice, according to the 2025 Law360 Pulse Lawyer Satisfaction Survey.

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'The Court Is Not A Cartoon': Judge Rips Dragon Watermark

By Hailey Konnath

A Michigan federal magistrate judge Monday ordered an East Lansing, Michigan, firm called Dragon Lawyers PC to stop plastering its pleadings with a large, suit-clad purple cartoon dragon watermark on each page, saying it's not only "distracting, it's juvenile and impertinent."

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Analysis

Feds Have Strong Hand On Judge Charged With Blocking ICE

By Danielle Ferguson and Carolyn Muyskens

A Wisconsin state judge faces an uphill battle in defending against federal criminal allegations that she helped a man evade immigration officials at a Wisconsin courthouse, but she may be able to stake out a defense in arguing the government can't prove intent, experts told Law360. 

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California Judge Loses Pay After Conviction For Murdering Wife

By Gina Kim

The California Commission on Judicial Performance formally suspended a California judge without pay after a state jury found him guilty of second-degree murder last week for shooting his wife to death in their Anaheim Hills home on Aug. 3, 2023, following a heated argument. 

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NJ Judge Apologizes Through Waylon Jennings Lyrics

By George Woolston

Clark Township, New Jersey, Municipal Judge Antonio Inacio said Tuesday that he isn't proud of all the things that led him to appear before a Garden State judiciary disciplinary committee, but he can say that he never intentionally hurt anyone by his conduct.

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$10M Brown Rudnick Deal With Guo Trustee Gets Judge's OK

By Aaron Keller

A Connecticut bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved a $10 million deal between Miles Guo's Chapter 11 trustee and the Chinese exile's onetime attorneys at Brown Rudnick LLP, and greenlighted 10 lesser settlements with other firms and luxury retailer Versace.

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Analysis

GOP Plan To Shutter Audit Watchdog Could Strain SEC

By Jessica Corso

Congressional Republicans are renewing the push to get rid of a financial regulator that conservatives have complained is costly and lacks proper oversight, but some former staffers at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board wonder whether the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has the manpower or expertise to take over the board's duties.

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Federal Defenders Of NY Staff Announce Union Drive

By Andrea Keckley

Staff members at the Federal Defenders of New York have announced their plans to join their attorney colleagues as members of the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys.

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Justices Scoff At Feds' Defenses In Mistaken FBI Raid Case

By Chart Riggall

Supreme Court justices Tuesday appeared flummoxed by the government's "ridiculous" arguments it should be immune to a Georgia resident's lawsuit over a mistaken FBI raid on her house, but seemed unlikely to issue a blanket ruling on when an officer's discretion trumps their liability for injuries caused by their actions.

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Alex Jones Wants High Court Look At $1.3B Sandy Hook Case

By Brian Steele

Bankrupt Infowars host Alex Jones will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate a mammoth libel judgment that families of Sandy Hook shooting victims secured against him and his company over his conspiratorial broadcasts calling the massacre a hoax, he told a Connecticut appellate court in seeking to extend a pause on the payout.

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Breyer To Talk Pragmatism At NJ Bar Association Convention

By Carla Baranauckas

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will bring his pragmatic legal philosophy to center stage when he appears at the New Jersey State Bar Association Convention on May 16 in Atlantic City.

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