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Good morning. Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are on the verge of closing their deal after the FTC suffered another loss in court. Plus, the Wisconsin Supreme Court won’t accept CLEs on diversity, and the U.S. Virgin Islands wants $190 million in its fight with JPMorgan Chase over Jeffrey Epstein. Monday, Monday, Monday.
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The runway for Microsoft’s planned $69 billion acquisition of video game maker Activision Blizzard, which faces a key deadline, is nearly clear after another court declined an FTC request to block it.
In a ruling late Friday, the Ninth Circuit rejected the FTC’s request for a temporary injunction against the tie-up, which it says could restrict access to some of the world’s most popular games. With the merger agreement between Microsoft and Activision, the largest in the history of the video game industry, set to expire tomorrow, the ruling comes at a key moment.
What hurdles remain? Now that its latest appeal has been rejected, the FTC may drop the fight, as it has in similar situations in the past. But for now, the regulator’s administrative trial is slated for next month. The deal also needs regulatory approval in Britain, where the Competition and Markets Authority said a restructured deal between Microsoft and Activision could satisfy its concerns, subject to a new investigation.
In the meantime, Microsoft announced it has signed an agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said.
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- A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court spurned a proposal by the state bar to let Wisconsin attorneys fulfill their required continuing legal education credits on classes addressing diversity, equity, inclusion, access, or recognition of bias. Under Wisconsin’s professional rules for lawyers, every active lawyer has to take at least 30 hours of CLE classes every two years. (Reuters)
- A Texas appeals court said a top deputy to suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton must face a state bar ethics complaint alleging professional misconduct over a lawsuit that Texas filed at the U.S. Supreme Court challenging Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential win. Lawyers for Brent Webster had said the commission’s case undermined the attorney general office’s broad powers to pursue court cases. (Reuters)
- Arnold & Porter inked a $300,000 contract with Romania to advocate for the country “on key areas of U.S.-Romania cooperation, such as good governance, democracy and rule of law, education, science, research, technology and people-to-people contacts,” according to a new DOJ filing. Arnold & Porter has previously registered advocacy for foreign government clients including the Honduras, Israel and Korea’s trade ministry.
- U.S. District Judge James Zagel, a Reagan appointee who served on the bench in the Northern District of Illinois for nearly 30 years, died at the age of 82. Zagel, a former prosecutor who tried serial killer Richard Speck, oversaw the criminal case of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
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That’s how much Alan Dershowitz must pay in legal fees as a court sanction over his representation of Kari Lake in a lawsuit that sought to prohibit the use of electronic voting machines in Arizona ahead of its 2022 elections. Dershowitz, a retired Harvard Law professor, argued he should not have been sanctioned at all for his role “of counsel” in Lake’s lawsuit. U.S. District Judge John Tuchi found Dershowitz had a limited role in the litigation. Still, Tuchi noted, Dershowitz signed numerous filings in the lawsuit, which the judge said was sanctionable.
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The Manhattan federal judge who ruled that Ripple Labs is not liable under federal securities law for selling XRP tokens on the open market devised an entirely new framework for determining whether crypto tokens are securities — and defense lawyers say her analysis could be a big help in private litigation against crypto issuers and exchanges. Alison Frankel explains why.
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“It’s essentially this or nothing.“
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—U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christine Gravelle, who approved a deal to allow bankrupt wedding dress retailer David’s Bridal to sell its business to asset manager Cion Investment in a no-cash transaction, reaching a deal to keep 195 stores open and avoid a total shutdown. Gravelle, sitting in Trenton, New Jersey, said that the company’s employees, landlords and creditors would be better off under new ownership than they would in a full liquidation. The company only received two other offers, it said at the hearing.
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- Jury selection will begin in New York state court in Michael Cohen’s 2019 civil case against the Trump Organization over unreimbursed attorney’s costs and fees from his work as a fixer for Donald Trump. Cohen, who said the real estate company stopped paying his bills after he began cooperating with several investigations into Trump, sued to recoup $1.9 million in fees, plus $1.9 million he was ordered to forfeit in a criminal case. The trial is scheduled for July 24-27, and court records show Donald Trump Jr is likely to testify.
- Google and its attorneys at Potter Minton and Jones Day will defend the company at a trial in Texas over claims brought by small tech developer Touchstream Technologies, which does business as Shodogg, that allege the tech giant’s Chromecast technology infringes patents related to streaming videos from a smaller screen to a larger one. Touchstream is represented by Shook Hardy & Bacon.
- A Massachusetts police officer is slated to face trial on charges that he conspired to engage in insider trading based on non-public information about Analog Devices’ planned acquisition of fellow chipmaker Linear Technology in 2016. Federal prosecutors in Boston said David Forte, an officer with the Needham Police Department, learned about the deal from his brother, a senior executive at Analog, before it was announced. Forte has said his brother did not give him any information and will testify as much.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is scheduled to hold a hearing in Miami to determine how to handle classified information in the criminal case against Donald Trump over his retention of government materials. Legal experts have said the complexities surrounding the use of highly classified documents as evidence are likely to delay Trump’s Aug. 14 trial. Trump and an aide who was also charged have pleaded not guilty. They contend that the current trial schedule is “untenable.”
- On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco will consider Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt’s requests to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a group of artists who say the companies misused their work to train their image-creating generative AI systems. Attorneys from Latham represent DeviantArt, and Cooley is defending Midjourney. The firms Lex Lumina and Fried Frank represent Stability AI. Lawyers from Joseph Saveri Law Firm and Lockridge Grindal Nauen represent plaintiffs.
- On Thursday, The Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on whether to advance a long-shot legislative bid that would impose a binding ethics code on the U.S. Supreme Court. The action by the panel follows reports detailing the failure of some conservative justices to disclose gifts and travel funded by wealthy and politically connected benefactors. The bill is not expected to clear the divided Congress.
- On Friday, plaintiffs’ shareholder attorneys and lawyers for Qualcomm are due to respond to Apple’s effort to shield two executives — Jeffrey Williams, who has served as Apple’s chief operating office since 2015, and Bruce Watrous, the company’s chief corporate and commercial counsel — from being required to sit and answer questions in a securities lawsuit. Apple, Williams and Watrous are not parties to the 2017 lawsuit, which alleged Qualcomm made misrepresentations about certain business practices that artificially boosted shares between 2012 and 2017. Lawyers from Gibson Dunn represent Apple and the two executives.
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- U.S. District Judge David Hale in Kentucky ruled that the state can enforce its law banning the use of puberty-blocking drugs and hormones for transgender children while it appeals his earlier order blocking the law. Hale found last month that the ban likely violated the U.S. Constitution, but said he had to put his own order on hold because the federal appeals court hearing the case recently paused a similar order in Tennessee. (Reuters)
- The U.S. Virgin Islands said it wants JPMorgan Chase to pay $150 million in civil penalties and give up $40 million of its earnings from Jeffrey Epstein to resolve a lawsuit accusing the largest U.S. bank of ignoring the disgraced late financier’s sex trafficking. As it defends against the suit, Chase has accused the U.S. Virgin Islands of giving Epstein more than $300 million in tax incentives and waiving sex offender monitoring requirements. (Reuters)
- Trader Joe’s sued its employee union in Los Angeles federal court, claiming the union violated its trademark rights by selling tote bags, buttons, mugs and other products featuring the store’s name and logo that are likely to confuse customers into thinking it made or endorsed them. A lawyer for the union, Seth Goldstein, said the lawsuit was part of a “union-busting campaign” to deprive Trader Joe’s United of its ability to fund itself, calling it “outrageous” and a violation of the National Labor Relations Act. (Reuters)
- Electronic health records company NextGen Healthcare has agreed to pay $31 million to settle claims that it misrepresented the capabilities of its software and paid users kickbacks to get them to recommend it, U.S. authorities said. Whistleblowers Elizabeth Ringold and Toby Markowitz, two clinicians who used NextGen’s software while working for the South Carolina Department of Corrections, brought the original lawsuit and will receive about $5.6 million from the settlement. (Reuters)
- Roche and two of its subsidiaries sued biotech company Biogen in Massachusetts federal court, accusing its proposed similar version of Roche’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug Actemra of infringing several of their patents. Roche, Genentech and Chugai Pharmaceutical told the court that Biogen’s biosimilar would infringe patents related to making and using their biologic drug. (Reuters)
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- Akin added three international trade partners from Hughes Hubbard in D.C.: Ryan Fayhee, Roy Liu and Tyler Grove. (Reuters)
- Winston & Strawn picked up three D.C.-based partners: Scott Border, Daniel Chaudoin and Caitlin Mandel. Border, previously at Sidley, focused on intellectual property. Chaudoin and Mandel joined Winston’s government investigations, enforcement and compliance practice from Kirkland. (Reuters)
- McDermott added Erin Kelly as a D.C.-based healthcare partner. Kelly was previously deputy general counsel at Signify Health. (McDermott)
- Barnes & Thornburg brought on Chicago-based partner Ken Kansa in the firm’s finance, insolvency and restructuring department. Kansa was previously at Sidley. (Barnes & Thornburg)
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Laws governing the privacy of biometric information like fingerprints and retina scans are growing in popularity, as are lawsuits accusing companies of failing to properly collect, store and destroy that information. But when a lawsuit looms, what kind of insurance protection do these companies have? Anjali Das of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker examines how insurance policy provisions have been interpreted to include — or exclude — claims over biometrics law violations.
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