Technology

  • July 18, 2024

    FCC Caps Prison Phone Rates To Be 'Just And Reasonable'

    The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday placed new caps on prison phone rates under the Martha Wright-Reed Act, enacted to make sure that rates for incarcerated people and their families are "just and reasonable."

  • July 18, 2024

    Tech Giants Can't Sink Slide-To-Unlock Patent At Fed. Circ.

    Samsung, Apple and Google failed on Thursday to persuade a panel of Federal Circuit judges to kill a patent covering the idea of sliding-to-unlock a phone, purportedly developed by a small Sweden smartphone developer over a decade ago.

  • July 18, 2024

    Another Enphase Investor Suit Claims Execs Hid Slow Growth

    Enphase Energy's top brass has been slapped with another shareholder complaint in California federal court, alleging they misrepresented the energy technology company's financial outlook by concealing a decrease in battery shipments and slower manufacturing outputs, which artificially inflated its stock price.

  • July 18, 2024

    Meta And FTC Want DC Circ. Privacy Fight Kept Paused

    Meta's D.C. Circuit bid to stop the Federal Trade Commission from modifying the parties' $5 billion privacy settlement should be kept on ice, both sides said Thursday, as the commission vies to toss Meta's trial court suit following a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

  • July 18, 2024

    King & Spalding Guides Quanta's $1.5B Cupertino Buy

    Houston-based Quanta Services Inc. said Thursday it has acquired fellow energy infrastructure provider Cupertino Electric Inc. for up to $1.54 billion, with King & Spalding LLP and Fenwick & West LLP providing legal counsel on the deal, respectively. 

  • July 18, 2024

    Deals Rumor Mill: Google, StandardAero, Sony

    Google parent Alphabet is nearing a $23 billion Wiz buy, PE firms circle StandardAero at a potential $10 billion price, and Sony backs away from Paramount after the Skydance deal. Law360 breaks down these and other notable deal rumors from the past week.

  • July 18, 2024

    X's NYC Office Settles Ex-Janitors' Back Pay Suit

    A group of unionized janitors who used to work in the New York City offices of social media company X have settled a suit alleging the company failed to comply with a city law requiring it to keep the janitors on for 90 days after terminating their contract.

  • July 18, 2024

    Ex-HP Worker Revamps 401(k) Forfeiture Funds Suit

    A former HP employee retooled his lawsuit accusing the company of unlawfully using former workers' forfeited 401(k) funds to satisfy its own contributions, telling a California federal court the company was presented with a conflict of interest in deciding how to use the money.

  • July 18, 2024

    SolarWinds Beats Most Claims In SEC's Data Breach Suit

    A New York federal judge on Thursday delivered a heavy blow to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's case against software developer SolarWinds Corp. by dismissing substantial portions of the lawsuit, including claims that the company committed securities fraud by minimizing the severity of a state-sponsored attack on its flagship product.

  • July 17, 2024

    T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon Accused Of Using Negotiating Cartel

    An intellectual property licensing business on Wednesday filed yet another suit against AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, this time accusing the telecommunications companies of wielding their market power and conspiring to refuse to license innovative 4G and 5G wireless communications system technology.

  • July 17, 2024

    Politan Sues Masimo Over Delayed Board Election Meeting

    Activist investment firm Politan Capital Management LP launched a lawsuit Wednesday against Masimo Corp. in Delaware Chancery Court just days after the medical technology company accused it of violating securities laws by trying to gain control of Masimo through a proxy contest that duped Masimo shareholders using "lies and deceit."

  • July 17, 2024

    Western Digital Owes $305M Over Hard Drive IP, Jury Told

    Hard drive goliath Western Digital owes $305 million for selling drives that infringe MR Technologies' patents for increasing storage capacity, MR's attorney told a California federal jury during opening statements Wednesday, while Western Digital's counsel said the patents are invalid and its products don't infringe anyway.

  • July 17, 2024

    Zoho Gets PTAB To Cut Bulk Of Conference Call Patent Claims

    Several Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions have wiped out claims in patents covering ways of coordinating conference calls online, following a challenge from a major Indian software company that's facing an infringement lawsuit over the patents in Texas.

  • July 17, 2024

    SEC Says Ex-CEO Of Trump-Tied SPAC Hid Merger Talks

    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday accused the former CEO of Digital World Acquisition Corp. of falsely representing that the special purpose acquisition company had no potential merger targets when he was actually personally discussing a merger with former President Donald Trump's social media company.

  • July 17, 2024

    Off-Channel Comms Top Concern For Compliance Pros

    Investment advisers' compliance officers have listed electronic communications surveillance as their hottest topic, beating out concerns about the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's marketing rule, according to a new survey of compliance professionals representing nearly 600 investment advisers.

  • July 17, 2024

    Calif. Asks 9th Circ. To Lift Injunction On Kids' Privacy Law

    California urged the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday to remove an injunction blocking a groundbreaking new law requiring social media platforms to bolster privacy protections for children, defending the protections and arguing that any unconstitutional provision should be severed following the U.S. Supreme Court's Moody v. NetChoice decision.

  • July 17, 2024

    9th Circ. Open To X's Challenge To Content Disclosure Law

    A three-judge Ninth Circuit panel appeared open Wednesday to granting X Corp.'s request to block at least some of a new California law requiring social media companies to provide semiannual disclosures regarding their content moderation policies, with each judge saying one particular provision appears to infringe free speech rights.

  • July 17, 2024

    PTAB Tears Down Roof Measurement Patent On Remand

    The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has found that Nearmap was able to show that all the challenged claims of an EagleView Technologies Inc. patent on measuring roofs were invalid as obvious, a move that came after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's director remanded the case.

  • July 17, 2024

    FCC To Vote On Smart Car Technology's Use Of 5.9 GHz

    The Federal Communications Commission is ready to vote on rules that would bring advanced vehicle communications technology to the 5.9 GHz band, setting standards for the technology's use in the slice of spectrum and greenlighting the use of in-vehicle and roadside units running on the technology.

  • July 17, 2024

    Whirlpool Wants To Wash Away Service Plan Repair Claims

    Whirlpool asked a Washington federal judge to send a proposed consumer class action down the drain, saying the aggrieved customer can't claim she was deceived about the details of an extended repair plan for a dishwasher when the full terms have always been easy to find online.

  • July 17, 2024

    Jimmy John's Biometric Info Suit 'Barely' Avoids Dismissal

    An Illinois federal judge refused Wednesday to toss a putative class action alleging Jimmy John's LLC unlawfully records customers via technology embedded in drive-through intercoms in violation of the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act, but he remarked on the "thinness" of the allegations and said the complaint "barely" survives.

  • July 17, 2024

    Many AI Patent Eligibility Issues Still Hazy After Guidance

    The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's new guidance on patent eligibility for inventions involving artificial intelligence provides some helpful details for patent applicants, but attorneys say it leaves unanswered questions that will likely require court decisions or legislation to sort out.

  • July 17, 2024

    Merrill Lynch Urges Arbitration Of Sweeping RICO Lawsuit

    Merrill Lynch told a Texas federal judge Tuesday that a wealthy telecommunications entrepreneur who is accusing the bank of a sweeping money laundering fraud doesn't have the right to bring the case to court, as the entrepreneur agreed to arbitration when he parked his money with Merrill.

  • July 17, 2024

    Medical Info Co. Hit With NJ Sex Bias Claims By Ex-Director

    Medical education company VuMedi Inc. has been hit with a sex discrimination suit in New Jersey federal court by the company's former director of medical education, who alleged that her supervisor told her he did not have high expectations for her because she is a mother.

  • July 17, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Tells ParkerVision To Close Fla. Case Before Appeal

    The Federal Circuit has ordered ParkerVision and Qualcomm to make a Florida federal judge explicitly end counterclaims in long-running infringement litigation between the two before continuing with ParkerVision's appeal.

Expert Analysis

  • Circuit Judge Writes An Opinion, AI Helps: What Now?

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    Last week's Eleventh Circuit opinion in Snell v. United Specialty Insurance, notable for a concurrence outlining the use of artificial intelligence to evaluate a term's common meaning, is hopefully the first step toward developing a coherent basis for the judiciary's generative AI use, says David Zaslowsky at Baker McKenzie.

  • Opinion

    US Solar Import Probe's Focus On China Is Misguided

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    The U.S. Department of Commerce's recent anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigation focuses on the apparent Chinese ownership of solar device importers in four Southeast Asian countries — a point that is irrelevant under the controlling statute, says John Anwesen at Lighthill.

  • 'Food As Health' Serves Up Fresh Legal Considerations

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    The growth of food as medicine presents a significant opportunity for healthcare organizations and nontraditional healthcare players to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs, though these innovative programs also bring compliance considerations that must be carefully navigated, say attorneys at McDermott.

  • EU's AI Act: Pitfalls And Opportunities For Data Collectors

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    The European Union’s new Artificial Intelligence Act entails explicit requirements and limitations throughout the AI value chain that might affect firms directly or indirectly dealing with AI development, such as data-as-a-service companies and web scraping providers, says Denas Grybauskas at Oxylabs.

  • Series

    In The CFPB Playbook: Regulatory Aims Get High Court Assist

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    Newly emboldened after the U.S. Supreme Court last month found that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding is constitutional, the bureau has likely experienced a psychic boost, allowing its already robust enforcement agenda to continue expanding, say attorneys at Husch Blackwell.

  • Novel Web Privacy Suits Under Calif. Credit Card Law From '71

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    A new surge in web-tracker litigation could make application of the California Song-Beverly Credit Card Act far more complex, despite the law far predating the rise of e-commerce, as plaintiffs continue to push the bounds of privacy litigation in the Golden State, say Matthew Pearson and Desirée Hunter-Reay at BakerHostetler.

  • FTC Hearing On Fake Review Rule Stressed Compliance Costs

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    The Federal Trade Commission is likely to finalize its proposed rule to prohibit marketers from using deceptive practices in their product reviews after an informal hearing covered arguments over whether costs of implementing the rule, such as review moderation and software maintenance, would be minimal, says Jeffrey Edelstein at Manatt.

  • Trending At The PTAB: Real Party In Interest And IPR

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    The Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s recent Luminex v. Signify decision, finding a complaint seeking indemnification may be treated as a public demand sufficient to establish a real party-in-interest, shows that the board continues to apply a broad and expansive definition to that term, say Yicong (Eve) Du and Yieyie Yang at Finnegan.

  • BF Borgers Clients Should Review Compliance, Liability

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    After the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recently announced enforcement proceedings against audit firm BF Borgers for fabricating audit documentation for hundreds of public companies, those companies will need to follow special procedures for disclosure and reporting — and may need to prepare for litigation from the plaintiffs bar, say attorneys at Debevoise.

  • Perspectives

    Trauma-Informed Legal Approaches For Pro Bono Attorneys

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    As National Trauma Awareness Month ends, pro bono attorneys should nevertheless continue to acknowledge the mental and physical effects of trauma, allowing them to better represent clients, and protect themselves from compassion fatigue and burnout, say Katherine Cronin at Stinson and Katharine Manning at Blackbird.

  • CFPB's Expanding Scope Evident In Coding Bootcamp Fine

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    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recent penalty against a for-profit coding bootcamp that misrepresented its tuition financing plans is a sign that the bureau is seeking to wield its supervisory and enforcement powers in more industries that offer consumer financing, say Jason McElroy and Brandon Sherman at Saul Ewing.

  • Fintech Compliance Amid Regulatory Focus On Sensitive Data

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    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recent, expansive pursuit of financial services companies using sensitive personal information signals a move into the Federal Trade Commission's territory, and the path forward for fintech and financial service providers involves a balance between innovation and compliance, say attorneys at Wilson Sonsini.

  • Series

    Playing Music Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    My deep and passionate involvement in playing, writing and producing music equipped me with skills — like creativity, improvisation and problem-solving — that contribute to the success of my legal career, says attorney Kenneth Greene.

  • How AI Cos. Can Cope With Shifting Copyright Landscape

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    In the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, recent legal disputes have focused on the utilization of copyrighted material to train algorithms, meaning companies should be aware of fair use implications and possible licensing solutions for AI users, say Michael Hobbs and Justin Tilghman at Troutman Pepper.

  • How Attys Can Avoid Pitfalls When Withdrawing From A Case

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    The Trump campaign's recent scuffle over its bid to replace its counsel in a pregnancy retaliation suit offers a chance to remind attorneys that many troubles inherent in withdrawing from a case can be mitigated or entirely avoided by communicating with clients openly and frequently, says Christopher Konneker at Orsinger Nelson.

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