WILMINGTON, Del. — The federal judge in Delaware overseeing an auction of Venezuelan oil shares to satisfy confirmed international arbitration awards and civil judgments against Venezuela worth more than $22 billion on Nov. 13 denied motions to disqualify himself, a court-appointed special master who recently recommended the court favor a $5.8 billion bid for Venezuela’s oil shares or the special master’s advisers filed by Venezuela, its affiliates and a rejected bidder.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge in Michigan wrongly construed the term “transparency” in an infringement dispute concerning patents related to a school bus sign, and it was unreasonable for a jury to find infringement under the doctrine of equivalents, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held Nov. 13; the panel reversed an infringement judgment as to one of the patents and vacated the infringement finding as to the other.

NEW YORK — A federal judge in Vermont properly reduced attorney fees for an employee’s counsel in a wrongful termination case after determining that the counsel’s billing was unreasonable; however, the judge’s additional reduction based on the worker’s degree of success was incorrect as it was based on the disproportionality of the requested amount to the monetary relief for the worker, a Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, vacating the attorney fee award and remanding for recalculation.

BOSTON — Arguing that the compilation of an administrative record would not be necessary should the court rule that the plaintiffs lack standing, the federal government in a Nov. 12 status report requested that it not be required by a Massachusetts federal court to compile the record for a lawsuit by several physicians’ professional groups and three Jane Does seeking to set aside the removal of the COVID-19 vaccination from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended immunization schedules for healthy children and pregnant women.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Texas federal judge erred in finding that claims in an oil technology company’s patent describing a tool used in oil wells were invalid as indefinite, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held Nov. 12; the panel found that the judge was wrong to reject the patent holder’s argument that the representative claim contained a “‘clear clerical’” error that the company argued was obviously corrected elsewhere in the patent in a way that would have been understood by a person of skill in the relevant art.

SAN FRANCISCO — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of investors’ claims against a fuel-cell server manufacturer’s outside accountant, finding that the accountant was not liable as a certifier of the company’s financial statements because the accountant’s audit opinion did not make any misstatements of fact.

OAKLAND, Calif. — A California federal judge on Nov. 12 issued a final judgment of $4,447,190 in favor of WhatsApp Inc. (now known as WhatsApp LLC) and its parent company Facebook Inc. (now known as Meta Platforms Inc.) and against NSO Group Technologies Ltd. and its parent company after a jury found that the defendants violated a California computer fraud law in a suit accusing the defendants of acquiring unauthorized access to individuals’ WhatsApp accounts.

MINNEAPOLIS — Wells Fargo & Co. would pay $84 million to resolve a class action against it and two other defendants under a proposed settlement the plaintiffs on Nov. 12 asked a Minnesota federal court to grant preliminary approval; the Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit challenges how Wells Fargo used dividends of its preferred stock held in its 401(k)’s employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) fund.