Analysis

Cognizant Execs' Trial Could Test Force Of FCPA Pause

By Carla Baranauckas

The government's decision to proceed with a trial of two former Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. executives despite the Trump administration's retreat from Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement adds a layer of intrigue to a legal saga that has already captivated the white collar bar given the rarity of such cases ever reaching juries.

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Meta's Held-Back Docs In AI Suit Merit Discovery, Authors Say

By Bonnie Eslinger

The California federal judge overseeing a proposed class action claiming Meta Platforms Inc. is using copyrighted material to train its large language model product said Thursday he will consider allowing the author plaintiffs more discovery in response to the tech giant's assertion that it had "inadvertently" held back up some 18,000 documents.

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Split 9th Circ. Won't Let ClassPass Arbitrate Auto-Renew Fight

By Dorothy Atkins

A split Ninth Circuit panel Thursday refused to send a proposed class action challenging ClassPass' subscription auto-renewal practices to arbitration, with the majority concluding that its online notices are too "muddled" while a dissenting judge slammed the majority's opinion for purportedly sowing "great uncertainty" in what constitutes a conspicuous notice.

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DOJ Tells DC Circ. To Keep Apple Out Of Google Case

By Ali Sullivan

The U.S. Department of Justice is urging the D.C. Circuit to keep Apple out of its remedies case against Google, arguing that Apple "sat on its hands" for years despite knowing from the outset of the litigation that its default search agreement with Google was at stake.

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US Vision Beats Suit Over 2021 Ransomware Attack

By Lauren Berg

A New Jersey federal judge has tossed a proposed class action alleging U.S. Vision failed to protect the personal information of more than 710,000 patients following a ransomware attack of its network servers in 2021.

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DraftKings To Pay $10M In NFT Proposed Class Settlement

By Brian Dowling

DraftKings Inc. will pay $10 million to users of the sports betting site who owned nonfungible tokens offered through its marketplace, according to a proposed settlement in the putative class action.

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Del. Corp. Litigation Bill Already Turning Up In Other Cases

By Jeff Montgomery

A fast-moving legislative push to curb some stockholder litigation and large class attorney fees in Delaware courts is getting more pushback, two weeks ahead of an initial state Senate hearing on the measure.

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Carolinas Law Firm Hit With Suit Over 2024 Data Breach

By Sarah Martinson

Riley Pope & Laney LLC, a law firm with offices in North and South Carolina, was hit with a proposed class action in South Carolina federal court alleging that consumers' personally identifiable information was exposed in a 2024 data breach.

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Calif. Data Broker Gets 3-Year Ban For Not Registering

By Allison Grande

The California Privacy Protection Agency has notched another settlement in its investigative enforcement of data broker registration compliance, announcing Thursday it had secured a deal that requires a company touting its ability to unearth "scary" amounts of consumer information to cease operations for the next three years.

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FCC Expands 'Do Not Originate' Rules To Curb Robocalls

By Nadia Dreid

Phone service providers up and down the call path will now be responsible for blocking calls coming from the Federal Communications Commission's "do not originate" list after the agency ushered in new rules to that effect Thursday.

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FCC Looking At Making TV Commercials Pipe Down Again

By Nadia Dreid

Television commercials might be getting too loud again, the Federal Communications Commission recognized Thursday when it voted to take a look at whether its rules about commercial volume are due for an update.

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FCC OKs Rules For 1st Spectrum Auction Since 2020

By Nadia Dreid

The Federal Communications Commission got the ball rolling on its first spectrum sale since 2020 Thursday by ushering in new rules for the process after the auction was greenlit by Congress.

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Justices Told Bose Ruling Will Deter Patent Settlements

By Andrew Karpan

A Bose rival is going to the U.S. Supreme Court after losing a Federal Circuit ruling last year that found its patents were doomed by the terms of how a related infringement case settled, warning that the decision would "dissuade parties from settlements."

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Fed. Circ. Upholds Netflix PTAB Win Over Chip Patent

By Andrew Karpan

Netflix persuaded the Federal Circuit to sign off Thursday on another one of the streaming company's wins at the patent board in its fight with a Broadcom subsidiary over chip technology.

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Apple Falsely Touted Watches As 'Carbon Neutral,' Buyers Say

By Hailey Konnath

Apple Watch purchasers on Wednesday lodged a proposed class action in California federal court, claiming that the tech giant marketed various smartwatch products as "carbon neutral" despite Apple not actually providing "genuine, additional carbon reductions."

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OpenEvidence Says Rival's Attack Targeted Its AI 'Blueprint'

By Brian Dowling

Medical artificial intelligence company OpenEvidence accused a Canadian competitor of launching cyberattacks on its system, executing dozens of attempts to trick the platform into handing over some of the technology's most valuable code, according to a Massachusetts federal lawsuit.

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Ex-Worker Says Manufacturer Fails To Pay For Off-Clock Work

By Emmy Freedman

A pharmaceutical manufacturing company requires hourly employees to perform tasks before and after their shifts but fails to compensate them for this extra time, a proposed class and collective action filed in Washington federal court said.

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Deals Rumor Mill

Anthropic Could Hit $62B Valuation, And More Deal Rumors

By Al Barbarino

AI startup Anthropic is close to securing funding at a $61.5 billion valuation, Bain Capital is mulling a sale of Rocket Software at a $10 billion valuation, and various additional private equity players are considering transactions across food, healthcare and finance. Here, Law360 breaks down these and other notable deal rumors from the past week.

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Brief

IBM Closes $6.4B HashiCorp Deal After UK Nod

By Al Barbarino

IBM said Thursday that it had completed its $6.4 billion acquisition of infrastructure automation company HashiCorp, just two days after U.K. regulators disclosed that the deal had their green light.

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Magnet Co. Execs To Plead Guilty For Emailing Info To China

By Elaine Briseño

Two magnetics manufacturing company executives have agreed to enter a plea of guilty for their role in emailing schematics from U.S. Department of Defense contractors to Chinese companies and will face three years behind bars.

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Lead Testing Co. Director To Admit False Statements

By Elliot Weld

A former quality assurance director for Magellan Diagnostics will plead guilty to making misleading statements to the government about a malfunction in a device that measures lead levels in blood, according to filings in Massachusetts federal court Thursday.

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How The AI Antitrust Landscape Might Evolve Under Trump

The Trump administration's early actions around artificial intelligence and antitrust policy, along with statements from competition regulators, suggest that the AI competition landscape may see reduced scrutiny around acquisitions, but not an entirely hands-off enforcement approach, say attorneys at Hogan Lovells.

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Series

Racing Corvettes Makes Me A Better Lawyer

The skills I use when racing Corvettes have enhanced my legal practice in several ways, because driving, like practicing law, requires precision, awareness and a good set of brakes — complete with the wisdom to know how and when to use them, says Kat Mateo at Olshan Frome.

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Sierra Leone Accuses Jenner & Block Of Fraudulent Overbilling

By Emily Sawicki

Facing an $8 million fee suit pending in D.C. federal court, the Republic of Sierra Leone on Thursday brought counterclaims accusing its former counsel from Jenner & Block LLP of fraudulently overbilling for work the firm did on its behalf between 2019 and 2022.

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Analysis

How Adams' Latest Move Might Checkmate The DOJ

By Phillip Bantz

New York City Mayor Eric Adams' push to permanently dismiss his federal corruption case is a clever legal strategy that appears to have backed the government into a corner, experts say.

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Polsinelli Blocked From Repping BCBS Settlement Opt-Outs

By Ryan Boysen

An Alabama federal judge has disqualified Polsinelli PC from representing hospitals that opt out of a landmark $2.8 billion Blue Cross Blue Shield antitrust settlement, even as other firms are licking their lips at the prospect of a multibillion-dollar bonanza of opt-out litigation.

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Goldstein Urges Judge To Lift Device Monitoring Requirement

By Phillip Bantz

U.S. Supreme Court advocate and SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein asked a Maryland federal judge Thursday to nix a condition of his pretrial release that requires him to have monitoring equipment installed on his electronic devices.

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Former Seyfarth Partner To Chair DOL's Review Board

By Irene Spezzamonte

The U.S. Department of Labor tapped a former Seyfarth Shaw LLP partner with more than 25 years of experience on employment and immigration law to be chair of the Administrative Review Board.

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Law Firm Marketing Budgets Have Fallen Behind Firm Growth

By Aebra Coe

During a period when many law firms experienced strong revenue and headcount growth, the industry's marketing budgets did not grow at the same pace, according to the results of a survey released Thursday.

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Conn. Atty Set To Go To Trial In Self-Defense Shooting Case

By Christine DeRosa

A Connecticut attorney is preparing for trial this week, but probably not in the way many would think — this time, he's appearing before a judge as the defendant in a manslaughter case over the 2021 shooting death of a man outside his law office.

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Deputy AG And Antitrust Nominations Head To Full Senate

By Courtney Bublé

The Senate Judiciary Committee sent the nominations of Todd Blanche, for deputy attorney general, and Gail Slater, for assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, to the full Senate on Thursday, the latter of whom received bipartisan support.

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