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December 19, 2025
WILMINGTON, Del. — Parents of two teens whose deaths were purportedly related to sextortion on the social media platform Instagram filed a wrongful death suit against Instagram LLC and its owner, Meta Platforms Inc., in Delaware state court, asserting that their teenage sons died after Meta “provided unfettered access” to “predators” on Instagram pretending to be young girls who enticed their sons into sending “compromising pictures” and then threatened to send those pictures to friends and family if the teens did not pay with money or gift cards.
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December 19, 2025
SEATTLE — A rideshare company and the estate and survivors of one of its drivers have reached a settlement in a lawsuit brought as a result of the driver’s murder during a carjacking attempt perpetrated by two people who had signed up for the company’s services with false personal information and a prepaid phone and gift card minutes before being matched with the driver.
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December 17, 2025
BATON ROUGE, La. — A Louisiana federal judge granted summary judgment to trade association NetChoice and enjoined enforcement of a state law designed to restrict minors’ access to social media platforms in NetChoice’s suit against the Louisiana attorney general and a related public official seeking to stop the law’s enforcement, finding that the law fails strict scrutiny.
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December 16, 2025
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge granted with modification publisher plaintiffs’ motion for certification of a subclass in advertisers’, publishers’ and related entities’ Sherman Act violation multidistrict litigation alleging that Google monopolized markets for ad servers, finding that the publishers have shown “that their claims are typical of the class.”
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December 15, 2025
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in California on Dec. 12 preliminarily certified a class of consumers who accuse Live Nation Entertainment Inc. and Ticketmaster LLC, two companies that are now merged, of engaging in anticompetitive practices.
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December 15, 2025
LOS ANGELES — A California federal judge on Dec. 12 ordered plaintiffs’ attorneys to pay $13,000 for filing “AI-tainted” briefs in the court and denied their motion to withdraw and amend those briefs and in separate orders refused to reconsider the enforceability of OnlyFans’ forum selection clause and dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims against OnlyFans’ owners and content creators’ agencies for deceptively marketing “chats” to subscribers.
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December 15, 2025
NEW YORK — DoorDash Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. on Dec. 12 filed a complaint in New York federal court against the city of New York, alleging violations of the U.S. Constitution and the New York Constitution related to the city’s tipping law requiring them and other companies’ third-party food and grocery delivery platforms to solicit tips of 10% for delivery workers before delivery is complete.
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December 12, 2025
SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Dec. 11 affirmed in part a lower court’s ruling finding Apple in contempt of a court-ordered injunction to enjoin Apple Inc. from certain anticompetitive practices on its App Store but reversed in part civil contempt sanctions regarding restrictions on Apple’s ability to impose any commissions on purchases outside an app in an antitrust dispute with Epic Games Inc., finding that the lower court did not err in finding Apple in contempt.
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December 12, 2025
SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge said “old gambling provisions” need to be “clean[ed] up” but nonetheless found that they apply to “Robux,” the digital in-game currency used in the game Roblox, in an order denying a Robux-gambling website creator’s motion to dismiss claims brought against him by the parents on behalf of children “who gambled away their Robux on RBLXWild.”
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December 11, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a dispute over a patent held by the International Business Machines Corp. related to single-sign-on (SSO) technology with Zillow Group Inc. and a related entity, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Panel affirmed U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) findings that some claims in the patent were invalid while others were not, rejecting arguments from both parties.
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December 10, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The developer of the ICEBlock app and a related entity sued U.S. Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi and other Trump administration officials, alleging violations of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution regarding the government’s “pressure campaign” that resulted in Apple Inc. removing the ICEBlock app from its App Store.
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December 10, 2025
[Editor’s Note: Copyright © 2025, LexisNexis. All rights reserved.]
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December 09, 2025
ATLANTA — The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Dec. 8 dismissed an appeal of summary judgment and sanctions for violating a prior injunction by officers of a company operating websites that provided assistance with obtaining services such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and sold consumers’ data to third parties, finding in part that the appellate court lacked jurisdiction because the appeal was not timely.
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December 09, 2025
PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge in Oregon declined to impose sanctions for misuse of artificial intelligence in a trademark case after an attorney took responsibility for hallucinated cites and the plaintiff and its attorneys waived associated attorney fees and said they would undertake efforts to educate about the proper uses of the technology in the legal profession.
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December 09, 2025
BALTIMORE — A Maryland federal judge denied the Maryland attorney general’s motion to dismiss an eight-count amended complaint filed by an internet trade association representing Amazon, Google and others whose “mission is to promote online commerce and speech,” holding that the association plausibly alleges that a Maryland online safety law burdens protected editorial activity, reaches expressive conduct subject to First Amendment scrutiny and conflicts with federal law.
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December 08, 2025
By Scott M. Seaman and Pedro E. Hernandez
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December 08, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a Dec. 5 opinion, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel vacated a Texas federal judge’s dismissal of an advertising technology company’s patent infringement suit against Meta Platforms Inc., finding that the dismissal hinged on a premature resolution of a disputed claim construction in Meta’s favor and a failure to credit the plaintiff-appellant’s factual allegations.
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December 08, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In consolidated suits in which a District of Columbia federal judge determined that Google LLC violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, the judge on Dec. 5 issued an opinion and final judgment outlining prohibitory injunctions, including requiring Google not to condition the licensing of Google Play on the distribution or license “of any Google GenAI [emerging generative artificial intelligence] Product on any device sold in the United States.”
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December 08, 2025
HONOLULU — The state of Hawaii filed suit in Hawaii state court against ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries, ByteDance Inc., TikTok Inc. and TikTok Ltd. (collectively, TikTok), the operators of the TikTok social media platform, “for falsely marketing and promoting—to children and their families—an addictive and otherwise harmful social media platform.”
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December 05, 2025
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The John R. Cash Revocable Trust sued The Coca-Cola Co. in a Tennessee federal court, alleging violation of state laws and the Lanham Act over Coca-Cola’s “Infringing Ad” allegedly using a singing voice that is “identifiable and attributable to Johnny Cash” without permission in a 2025 NCAA college football advertising campaign on television networks and across social media platforms.
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December 04, 2025
CHICAGO — A named plaintiff who signed up for Amazon.com Inc.’s Voice ID program after the filing of a suit would be subject to unique defenses that render him unfit to be a class representative, a federal judge in Illinois said while certifying claims that the company violated Illinois law by collecting certain biometric data through its Alexa artificial intelligence system.
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December 03, 2025
SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge dismissed with leave to amend a putative class action filed by citizens of the United Kingdom against two companies that own and operate the “Honey” discount-finding browser extension, finding that the plaintiffs’ claim for monetary restitution under California’s unfair competition law (UCL) is actually a claim for damages and, therefore, not recoverable.
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December 03, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A District of Columbia federal judge on Dec. 2 issued a revised opinion with “minimal redactions” after issuing an earlier redacted opinion entering judgment in favor of Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook Inc.) regarding allegations by the Federal Trade Commission that Meta monopolized the personal social networking (PSN) market by buying rivals WhatsApp and Instagram, finding that the FTC failed to show that Meta has monopoly power in the relevant market.
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December 02, 2025
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel once again ruled against a technology company on Dec. 1, affirming a finding of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that certain claims of the company’s patent describing a handheld device using a camera to receive gesture-based inputs are invalid as anticipated; the panel also dismissed the company’s appeal in part related to other patent claims that the appellate court had already held to be invalid.
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December 01, 2025
CHICAGO — An Illinois appeals court panel held that a management company for multiple nursing care facilities is not entitled to recover the expenses it incurred following a cyberattack on one of its payroll vendors, affirming a lower court’s ruling in favor of an insurer in the management company’s declaratory judgment lawsuit.