Big Sipz mark was not distinctive when BuzzBallz acquired lookalike domain names. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted summary judgment to ready-to-drink cocktail maker BuzzBallz, LLC on the remaining counterclaims brought by rival MPL Brands NV, Inc., d.b.a. Patco Brands. The court held that Patco's cybersquatting counterclaim failed because its Big Sipz mark was not distinctive when BuzzBallz registered or acquired similar domain names, and that Patco's…

The FDA's delisting of tirzepatide injection products was neither procedurally defective nor arbitrary and capricious. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment in favor of the FDA and Eli Lilly & Company in a challenge brought by compounding pharmacies and their trade association over the FDA's December 2024 decision to remove tirzepatide injection products from the federal drug shortage list. The court held that even assuming the FDA should have employed notice-and-comment…

A multi-page website specimen satisfied the display-associated-with-goods standard despite requiring several clicks to complete a purchase. In a non-precedential opinion, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board reversed a refusal to register the mark RAISED RIGHT RR VETERINARY SUPPORT, finding that a website specimen spanning multiple pages adequately functioned as a point-of-sale display even though the applied-for mark appeared only on the first page and consumers had to navigate through…

The Commission granted early termination of its HSR review of a vertical merger in the nascent quantum computing sector. The Federal Trade Commission announced that it has terminated its antitrust review of IonQ, Inc.'s proposed acquisition of SkyWater Technology, Inc. on July 28, 2026, clearing the path for a vertical merger that drew split views within the Commission, not on whether competitive concerns existed, but on whether those concerns were substantial enough to justify a behavioral…

The retaliation claim survived on the strength of disputed facts and the defendant's shifting termination rationale. An African-American warehouse worker who was fired on the same day she reported to HR that her white supervisor had called her a slave may proceed with her retaliation claim, a federal district court found. She brought claims of race discrimination, hostile work environment, and retaliation under Title VII and 42 U.S.C. § 1981, arguing that her supervisor had treated her poorly…

The plaintiff's allegations were too conclusory to survive Rule 12 scrutiny and insufficient to support standing for products she never purchased. A federal district court in New Jersey dismissed all claims in a putative class action against UPPAbaby, an infant products manufacturer, holding that the plaintiff's complaint relied on conclusory labels and assumptions rather than the factual allegations required to plausibly state a claim under the Iqbal/Twombly standard. The plaintiff’s claims…

The officer’s supervisors were entitled to qualified immunity on Fourth Amendment claims over tracking an employer-owned vehicle. A federal court in Wisconsin granted summary judgment to the City of Superior and four individual police supervisors, dismissing a former narcotics investigator's claims that she was discriminated against because of her pregnancy and maternity status. The former officer alleged that her supervisors engaged in a series of discriminatory acts, including derogatory…

The former lead installer's sex discrimination and retaliation claims rested on conclusory allegations rather than record evidence. A construction employee had complained that her supervisor demeaned her and after an internal investigation, in which the employee never brought up sex discrimination, the employee was offered a transfer to a different jobsite at the same pay rate. The employee declined the transfer, resigned, and sued for sex discrimination and retaliation. The district court…

Claims centered on the imitation of a person's voice fall outside the subject matter of copyright, even when artificial intelligence is the alleged imitator. A federal district court in the Northern District of California ordered the remand of a lawsuit brought by NPR radio host David Greene against Google LLC and Alphabet Inc., holding that Greene's state law claims are not preempted by the Copyright Act because they are fundamentally about the unauthorized use of his voice, an output of…

The DAB rejected Connecticut's bid to recover federal funds for hospital cost adjustments filed years after the two-year filing deadline, finding no state plan authorization for an interim rate methodology. The HHS Departmental Appeals Board (Board) affirmed a $21,627,547 disallowance of federal financial participation sought by the Connecticut Department of Social Services (Connecticut DSS) for disproportionate share hospital (DSH) expenditures spanning federal fiscal years 2008 through 2012.…

The court rejected FTC's accounting challenges, rules receiver's compensation is properly charged against receivership fund under terms of original restraining order. The federal district court in Newark, New Jersey approved a receiver's application for final legal fees, discharge from duties, and turnover of remaining receivership funds, rejecting the FTC’s objections to the fee request in a consumer fraud case that produced a $15.7 million stipulated judgment. The court held that the…

A group of congressional Democrats has asked the Justice Department's Antitrust Division to commit to an impartial, arm's-length review of Fox Corporation's proposed $22 billion acquisition of Roku, pointing to recent merger clearances and the division leadership's stated preference for settlements over trials. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative Becca Balint (D-Vt.), joined by Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), Jesús "Chuy" García (D-IL),…

The court found no irreparable harm despite “serious questions” on merits. A federal district court in California declined to block Meta Platforms from proceeding with terminations tied to its 8,000-person reduction in force. The court ruled that while the employees, who had all taken or requested protected leave or requested accommodations prior to the reduction in force, raised serious questions about the company’s use of artificial intelligence in employment decisions, they failed to…

Court certifies downstream purchaser and cattle producer classes, but denies certification to feeder cattle sellers and futures traders. Nearly a decade of alleged price manipulation in the American beef industry reached a pivotal moment when the district court in Minneapolis issued class certification rulings in the multidistrict litigation accusing the nation's four largest beef packers of conspiring to restrain cattle slaughter and inflate beef prices between 2014 and 2020. Across two…

Deputy AAG Dina Kallay details recent statements of interest on standard-essential patents, injunctions, and disclosure obligations, framing the agency's approach to intellectual property enforcement. Dina Kallay, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, used a July 8 address at the Hudson Institute Forum for Intellectual Property to lay out the Division's current thinking on the intersection of patent rights and antitrust enforcement, arguing that…

Ruling clarifies that "defective" and "unreasonably dangerous" are separate elements a plaintiff must independently prove. The Arizona Supreme Court held that a strict product liability claim requires proof of two distinct elements; that a product was defective, and separately, that the defect rendered it unreasonably dangerous. The ruling cleared up conflicting appeals court decisions that had declared that satisfying either the consumer expectation test or the risk/benefit analysis,…

The court certifies amended indirect-purchaser classes, adding Illinois as a repealer jurisdiction, and clears the way for notice purchasers as the latest round of CIIPP settlements moves toward a fairness hearing. The federal district court in Minneapolis, Minnesota has preliminarily approved two class action settlements in the long-running In re Pork Antitrust Litigation, resolving the claims of Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs (CIIPPs) against Triumph Foods, LLC…

The travel booking app preselected additional charges and hid them from consumers. The FTC has resolved its enforcement action against Hopper Inc., a Canadian company, and its U.S. subsidiary, Hopper (USA), Inc., through a stipulated order requiring the companies to pay $35 million and to restructure how they disclose and obtain consent for fees across their travel-booking platforms, the agency announced . The FTC's complaint, filed in the District of Massachusetts, alleged that Hopper's "no…

The court rejected arguments that the company's former entertainment representative could escape liability through nominative fair use and arm's-length contractual characterizations. A federal district court in the Central District of California denied a counterclaim-defendants' motion to dismiss Build-A-Bear Workshop's counter-complaint, finding that allegations of alter ego liability, breach of fiduciary duty, and unauthorized trademark use were each adequately pleaded against the company’s…

Deciding whether the marks were descriptive and have acquired secondary meaning could not be resolved at summary judgment. A sanctioning organization that governs and organizes competitive cheerleading and dance sued a competitive cheerleading organization over its use of the words “Worlds” and “The Cheerleading Worlds, of which the sanctioning organization claimed to own the trademark to. The 11th Circuit reversed summary judgment in favor of the competitive cheerleading organization and…