These days, some of tech’s most important decisions are being made inside courtrooms. Google and Facebook are fending off antitrust accusations, while patent suits determine how much control of their own products they can have. The slow fight over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act threatens platforms like Twitter and YouTube with untold liability suits for the content they host. Gig economy companies like Uber and Airbnb are fighting for their very existence as their workers push for the protections of full-time employees. In each case, judges and juries are setting the rules about exactly how far tech companies can push the envelope and exactly how much protection everyday people have. This is where we keep track of those legal fights and the broader principles behind them. When you move fast and break things, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise when you end up in court.
Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order as part of the publications’ lawsuit against the Trump administration, filed after their press credentials were revoked. It orders the admin to restore the credentials, but only lasts for 14 days while the lawsuit rumbles on.
The Theranos founder convicted of fraud in 2022 and sentenced to 11 years behind bars will be transferred from a minimum-security federal prison next year, according to a letter sent to victims of her crime. After several reductions to her sentence, her scheduled release remains February 22nd, 2030, but prisoners typically only spend a short time in halfway houses. Last year, she requested to have her sentence commuted by the Department of Justice.
[The New York Times]
It’s AI CEO against AI CEO, and things are changing by the day.
In court documents unredacted Thursday, lawyers for the NYT in its copyright infringement case against Microsoft and OpenAI cited Microsoft’s Director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht, saying that “millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions… almost no one intended for content they created to be used in this fashion, nor are they compensated for its use.”
The Orlando Sentinel, which is also part of the suit, reports a Microsoft filing “framed Hecht as someone on the payroll to play a contrarian.”
The New York Times reported Thursday that federal prosecutors are in the “early stages” of a criminal investigation into the Clippers’ shady sponsorship arrangements for Kawhi Leonard, using companies like Aspiration, Daktronics (which already revealed an ongoing SEC investigation), and Boingo Wireless.
Pablo Torre obviously chimed in with his take on the proceedings, saying “there is, in fact, more.”
A 2025 lawsuit claiming TikTok violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act will now go to trial after Judge Cory Liu granted the state’s request for a partial summary judgment on Thursday.
The state had argued that TikTok said it would remove content with drugs, gambling, or graphic injuries but instead designated it “hard to find,” and said a Restricted Mode setting filtered out content that was inappropriate for minors while employees internally acknowledged it didn’t work as well as advertised.
Subscribers of Anthropic’s Max plan ($100-$200 per month) say they didn’t get what they thought they were paying for.
More than three years after Tate and his brother were arrested and indicted in Romania on charges of human trafficking, Reuters reports the DIICOT prosecuting unit has indicted Tate again. They’ve charged Tate for “trafficking minors, money laundering, sex with a minor and witness tampering and his brother Tristan for complicity.”
Both Tates were arrested in Miami in July after British authorities requested their extradition, and they are currently in jail in the US.
Kalshi says that in February, the former Republican congressman “placed a series of large trades in a market where the underlying contracts depended upon his own attendance” at the State of the Union. He’s now permanently banned and penalized $71,356.
In other news about everything being gambling now:
In July, Gabriel Perez was accused of insider trading on Kalshi and became the target of a federal investigation for placing bets on what words would be mentioned in the president’s speeches. Now the invesitgation has come to a close. The CFTC issued a release on Friday saying:
Perez must disgorge the profits he made from his unlawful trading totaling $107,539.02 and pay a civil monetary penalty of $65,000 … Under the order, a three-year trading ban is imposed on Perez.
The Wall Street Journal has a rundown on the behind-the-scenes wrangling that led to the baffling settlement agreement earlier this year, and left state AGs to pursue their own case. In an unusual twist, the settlement talks happened at the White House, with the AG and the White House lawyer, before giving the states a day to decide whether to join the deal. None did.
And at the end:
The following month, Trump nominated McDonald—the Sullivan & Cromwell lawyer who had represented Live Nation in the settlement—to be Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor.
According to Bloomberg, a “nearly year-old investigation” is looking into the possibility that a16z “investment partners are improperly serving on the boards of competing artificial intelligence companies.” Co-founder Ben Horowitz is on the board of Databricks, while partner Martin Casado was on the board of dbt labs before it was acquired by Fivetran, where he now holds a seat.
A preliminary injunction issued Wednesday finds the prediction market has likely broken state laws against running an illegal gambling operation.
The order requires Kalshi to stop offering, accepting, or facilitating wagers on sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, tech and science, or mentions in Washington. Kalshi must implement an IP address and residency based geofence by August 19 and a multi-source geofencing solution by September 2.
This does not include all the wagers offered on Kalshi, but it includes a substantial part of their business, which in recent years has been increasingly driven by sports wagers.
The New York Times reports that Mangione, who is accused of murdering healthcare executive Brian Thompson, may plead guilty on Friday in the federal case against him. Mangione is also facing New York state charges in a trial that is scheduled to start in just a few weeks. His legal team could argue that the New York charges amount to double jeopardy if Mangione takes a plea in the federal case.
[NYTimes.com]
The drivers won the right to unionize last year after Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill enabling gig workers to unionize. The ridehail drivers would remain independent contractors but would be able to negotiate with the companies for better pay and benefits. The state is the second to allow ridehail drivers to unionize, after Massachusetts. Illinois is also considering its own legislation.
The Guardian reports that Meta glasses, and any others with cameras, will be confiscated on entering judicial buildings, and returned on departure. It follows New York’s similar ban last month. Taking photos or videos is already prohibited in UK courts, but smartphones are allowed in; smart glasses aren’t getting that benefit of the doubt.
[the Guardian]
A defamation lawsuit by Keith Bass over SpyTalk writer Jeff Stein’s report that Bass had been “effectively fired” from his post leading the CIA’s Office of Medical Services in 2021 has been dismissed with prejudice.
Axios reports it’s the second victory since the Defender program launched, “but the first major federal suit,” while noting that other platforms are adding access to legal resources as well.
Only 3,300 more lawsuits to go, all filed by minors claiming that TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat were designed to be addictive, resulting in harm to their mental health. The plaintiffs’ claims against Meta, Google, and Snap are still on track for a bellwether trial in October. The first case to reach trial resulted in a $4.2 million verdict against Meta and $1.8 million against Google.
The German licensing organization GEMA filed suit in January of 2025. The court found that Suno didn’t have the rights to train its models on artists represented by GEMA, and now it has to disclose any “illicit revenue” and pay unspecified damages. The company can still appeal the ruling.
Brandon Klayme was wrongly convicted for possession of child pornography after the investigation botched his Kik username, “fus_ro_dah,” in reference to Bethesda’s Skyrim videogame. The real suspect’s username — “fus__ro_dah” — included one additional underscore, a “subtle mistake that changed the course of my life,” Klayme said.
Illustrators, authors, and musicians are optimistic about their chances in court, if not about the future of AI.
XAI has filed a lawsuit in response to a law taking effect on Saturday that bans apps and websites from generating non-consensual sexualized imagery. The Musk-led company responsible for the Grok chatbot said the law will impact free speech and visual expression “in a clumsy attempt to prohibit ‘nudification.’”
“See you in court, creep,” responded Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
