Google To Pay Android Users $135M To End Data Use Suit

By Allison Grande

Google agreed to pay $135 million and obtain consent from new Android users for use of their cellular data to resolve a proposed class action accusing it of conducting "passive" data transfers without consumers' knowledge or consent over the Android operating system, according to a proposed deal filed in California federal court.

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Mid-America Inks $53M Deal In RealPage Landlord MDL

By Lauren Berg

Mid-America Apartment Communities Inc. revealed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Wednesday that it will pay $53 million to settle out of multidistrict antitrust litigation alleging some of the largest landlords in the country used RealPage Inc.'s software to fix rent prices for residential properties.

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7th Circ. Weighs 'Unprecedented' Clearview AI Privacy Deal

By Celeste Bott

The Seventh Circuit on Wednesday raised misgivings about a novel settlement ending multidistrict litigation over Clearview AI's collection of biometric data online, pressing an attorney for those objecting to the deal to offer alternatives they'd deem fair, given the risk of the company going bankrupt and class members receiving no payout at all.

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Ex-Google Engineer's Trade Secret Theft Case Goes To Jury

By Bonnie Eslinger

Software engineer Linwei Ding "stole, cheated and lied" when he worked at Google LLC, taking its artificial intelligence trade secrets to help himself and China, a California federal prosecutor told jurors Tuesday, urging them to convict him of economic espionage and trade secret theft.

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Judge Lets BMW Drop Contempt Bid After 'Battle Royale'

By Ryan Davis

Following what BMW called a "battle royale" where the parties accused each other of misrepresentation, a Texas federal judge Wednesday granted the automaker's motion to withdraw its bid to hold Onesta IP in contempt of a now-stayed order for the licensing company to drop German litigation over U.S. patents.

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Anthropic Hit With 2nd Music IP Suit, This Time For $3B

By Hailey Konnath

Major music publishers already suing Anthropic for copyright infringement filed a second, $3 billion suit against the artificial intelligence company on Wednesday, a move they say is necessary to hold Anthropic accountable for "brazen," newly discovered mass infringement of sheet music and songbooks.

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New Squires Order Allows 4 Patent Reviews, Denies 25 Others

By Theresa Schliep

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director John Squires instituted four America Invents Act patent challenges while denying 25 others in his most recent summary decision.

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Analysis

Trade Secret Filings Hit Record High In 2025, Report Finds

By Ivan Moreno

Trade secret litigation reached an all-time high in 2025, with more than 1,500 federal cases filed for the first time ever, according to a new report by legal analytics firm Lex Machina, which also highlights trends about damages, the busiest courts and the law firms most frequently involved.

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Senators Question If FirstNet, AT&T Need More Oversight

By Christopher Cole

A U.S. Senate panel Wednesday examined calls to reform the national first responder network and to rework AT&T's 25-year exclusive contract to provide network coverage for emergency personnel across the country.

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Social Media Addiction Laws Eyed By Conn. Governor, AG

By Aaron Keller

Connecticut lawmakers will consider forcing social media companies to display mental health warning labels and file state reports detailing the numbers of youth users, parental consent figures and average daily screen time statistics, Gov. Ned Lamont and Attorney General William M. Tong said in a Wednesday statement.

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FCC Sees Dead People On Lifeline, But Dems Balk At New Reg

By Christopher Cole

Democrats are bristling against a plan by the Federal Communications Commission to reduce purported fraud in the Lifeline program, where the agency says some states enrolled dead people and others who don't qualify.

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Brief

FCC Chair Signals Feb. Vote On 900 MHz Expansion

By Corey Rothauser

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said the commission plans to vote next month on an order that would allow broadband deployment across the full 10 megahertz of the 900 MHz band, a move the nation's railroads have said they would support but only with strict safeguards in place.

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Fed. Circ. Won't Revive MasterCard Trade Secret Claims

By Elliot Weld

The Federal Circuit declined to revive trade secret theft claims Wednesday brought by a MasterCard unit against two former McKinsey consultants, agreeing with a lower court that the company had failed to identify the alleged trade secrets with enough specificity.

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IT Co.'s Arbitration Pact Undercut Class Rights, 9th Circ. Says

By Irene Spezzamonte

TEKsystems Inc. engaged in misleading and coercive actions when it provided an arbitration pact to technology recruiters seeking unpaid overtime nearly two years after they lodged their suit, the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday, affirming a California federal court decision.

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Advocates Seek Shift To 1st Circ. In Prison Call Rate Cases

By Corey Rothauser

A public interest group, backed by other public interest petitioners, is asking the D.C. Circuit to transfer to the First Circuit the challenges to the Federal Communications Commission's latest prison phone rate order, arguing the court is already deeply familiar with the dispute and best positioned to resolve it.

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Krispy Kreme Reaches $1.6M Deal Over Employee Data Breach

By Rae Ann Varona

Krispy Kreme has agreed to a $1.6 million settlement to resolve a consolidated proposed class action that accused the doughnut chain of failing to protect current and former employees' personal information from a November 2024 data breach, according to a filing in North Carolina federal court.

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Amazon Must Face Delivery Driver Restroom Tech Claims

By Elliot Weld

A Washington federal judge on Wednesday mostly allowed a company's claims accusing Amazon.com Inc. of stealing technology that routes delivery drivers to nearby bathrooms to proceed, saying he would not stop it from presenting its misappropriation claims.

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TED Talks Producer Can't Nix Video Data Sharing Privacy Suit

By Lauren Berg

A Manhattan federal judge won't toss a lawsuit alleging the nonprofit producer of TED Talks unlawfully disclosed to third-party trackers the personally identifiable information of consumers who made accounts to watch videos on its website and app, saying the consumers have adequately alleged the disclosures violate the Video Privacy Protection Act.

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LegitScript's Counterclaims Against PharmacyChecker Tossed

By Matthew Perlman

An Oregon federal court dismissed LegitScript's counterclaims accusing PharmacyChecker.com of making false statements about the legality of importing prescription drugs, in a suit accusing the pharmacy accreditation provider of blacklisting the price-checking website.

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Call Center Workers Ink Wage Deal With Disability Nonprofit

By Irene Spezzamonte

A disability services nonprofit has agreed to pay $76,500 to settle a suit accusing it of failing to pay call center employees for work before shifts and during unpaid meal breaks and of miscalculating their overtime, the workers told a Virginia federal court.

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Apple Screen Maker Gets Partial Win In PTAB Reviews

By Adam Lidgett

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has invalidated the entirety of an Optronic Sciences LLC pixel structure device patent, while finding that challenger BOE Technology Group Co. was only able to show that some claims in a separate patent were invalid.

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Del. Justices Told ERISA, Legal Fee Tangle Unprecedented

By Jeff Montgomery

An attorney for a distressed credit fund told Delaware's Supreme Court justices on Wednesday that a vice chancellor made an unprecedented finding last year that provisions of the nation's employee retirement income law barred entitlement to legal fee advancement in a state contract case, urging the justices to overturn the ruling.

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Employee Exodus Prompts CEO Defamation Lawsuit

By Matthew Santoni

Employees moving from one Turkish company to another has led to a $5.5 million defamation lawsuit between the CEOs of their American affiliates, according to a complaint filed in a federal court in Pennsylvania.

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Fiserv Uses Its Data Security Flaws For Upsells, Suit Says

By Katryna Perera

Payment systems company Fiserv Inc. is facing another suit over its alleged data security flaws, with a credit union claiming the company has allowed its online banking platform to be "repeatedly hacked, again and again," and then uses these failures to upsell additional security measures to users. 

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Louis Vuitton Didn't Heed Salesforce Breach Alert, Suit Says

By Gina Kim

Louis Vuitton failed to heed warnings and security recommendations from Salesforce to protect against "vishing" techniques from cybercriminals who ended up infiltrating the fashion house's systems last summer and stole customer information, alleges a proposed class action filed Tuesday in New York federal court.

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Self-Driving Car Biz Waabi Secures $750M In New Funding

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Self-driving automobile tech company Waabi on Wednesday announced that it secured $750 million of new funding and unveiled a partnership with Uber that will be used to develop and deploy robotaxis.

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Ropes-Led EAM Clinches 2nd Fund With $575M In Tow

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Ropes & Gray LLP-advised private equity shop Equality Asset Management announced Wednesday that it wrapped its second fund with $575 million in investor commitments.

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Ropes Leads Kraken-Linked SPAC's Upsized $300M Listing

By Aislinn Keely

Krakacquisition, a blank check company that counts crypto exchange Kraken among its backers, began trading on Wednesday after pricing an upsized $300 million initial public offering steered by Ropes & Gray LLP and underwriter counsel Allen Overy Shearman Sterling US LLP.

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BlackRock, Eclipse Lead Cellares' $257M Funding Round

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Integrated development and manufacturing organization company Cellares, which focuses on the large-scale manufacturing of cell therapies, on Wednesday announced that it closed a $257 million funding round, bringing the South San Francisco, California-based company's total capital raised to $612 million.

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SEC Says Musk Can't Fight 'Uncontested' Facts In Twitter Case

By Katryna Perera

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday further urged a D.C. federal judge to grant it an early win in the agency's enforcement action against Elon Musk over his Twitter stock purchases, saying Musk's recent opposition brief "only confirms that the court should grant" summary judgment.

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Data Co.'s Brass, Top Customer Face SEC 'Round-Trip' Claims

By Emilie Ruscoe

Executives of a now-bankrupt data intelligence company face U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claims that they conspired with one of the company's biggest customers on a so-called round-trip accounting scheme to overstate the company's revenue and become a more attractive target for a special purpose acquisition company.

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Crowell & Moring Adds Tech Firm IP Atty In Southern Calif.

By James Mills

Crowell & Moring LLP is expanding its California team, bringing in an intellectual property attorney most recently with biotechnology firm Grail as a partner in its Orange County office in Irvine.

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What Businesses Offering AI Should Expect From The FTC

The Federal Trade Commission's move to reopen and set aside an administrative order against Rytr shows that the FTC is serious about executing on the administration's Artificial Intelligence Action Plan, and won't stand in the way of businesses offering AI products with pro-consumer, legitimate uses, say attorneys at Reed Smith.

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Expect Major Shifts In Patent And Trademark Policy This Year

New leadership and initiatives promise to bring consequential changes to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's practices in 2026, likely favoring patent allowance and issuance, as well as streamlining trademark processes, say attorneys at Knobbe Martens.

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How FERC Is Shaping The Future Of Data Center Grid Use

Two recent orders from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission affecting the PJM Interconnection and Southwest Power Pool regions offer the first glimpse into how FERC will address the challenges of balancing resource adequacy, grid reliability and fair cost allocation for expansions to accommodate artificial intelligence-driven data centers, say attorneys at Husch Blackwell.

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What To Expect From Justices' 401(k) Ruling, DOL Rulemaking

The U.S. Supreme Court's upcoming ruling in Anderson v. Intel, addressing alternative assets in defined contribution plans, coupled with the U.S. Department of Labor's recently proposed regulation on fiduciary duties in selecting alternative investments, could alleviate the litigation risk that has impeded wider consideration of such investments, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.

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Digital Assets May Be In For A Growth Spurt In 2026

All signs point to an acceleration in digital asset product and service innovation throughout 2026, and while questions of first impression still need to be addressed, some legal issues will be clarified, spurring developments namely on the tokenization and stablecoin fronts, say attorneys at Skadden.

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Series

Judges On AI: How Judicial Use Informs Guardrails

U.S. Magistrate Judge Maritza Dominguez Braswell at the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado discusses why having a sense of how generative AI tools behave, where they add value, where they introduce risk and how they are reshaping the practice of law is key for today's judges.

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Feature

From TikTok To The Courtroom, The Rise Of Lawfluencers

By Chris Villani

A growing group of legal influencers with huge followings say social media use is helping them expand their practices along with their brands and offering marketing lessons that even BigLaw can learn from.

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Clemency Favors White Collar Offenders, New Study Shows

By Phillip Bantz

White collar criminal defendants are more likely than other types of offenders to receive presidential pardons, especially under the Trump administration, a new analysis of clemency actions shows, raising concerns about a system one expert called "broken."

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DOJ Awards $1M In First For Antitrust Whistleblower Program

By Rae Ann Varona

The U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division awarded a whistleblower $1 million for providing information that led to charges and a $3.28 million criminal fine against used-vehicle auction site EBlock, marking the first-ever award under a new antitrust whistleblower program, the DOJ announced Thursday.

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Crowell & Moring Loses DC Appeal In $30M COVID Rent Dispute

By Isaac Monterose

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals on Thursday ruled against Crowell & Moring LLP's appeal for its $30 million rent dispute with a D.C. office landlord that refused to grant a coronavirus-related rent abatement.

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Bondi Elevates Pa. US Atty Amid Appointments Scrutiny

By Matthew Santoni

The first assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania is being retained and elevated to full U.S. attorney, Attorney General Pamela Bondi announced Thursday, though the appointment will have to remain temporary or he could face the same questions about his appointment as other top prosecutors in President Donald Trump's administration.

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Law360 Seeks Members For Its 2026 Editorial Boards

Law360 is looking for avid readers of our publications to serve as members of our 2026 editorial advisory boards.

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