Tesco is suing Broadcom and reseller Computacenter for at least $134 million, claiming that VMware's perpetual license support agreements were breached after Broadcom's acquisition. The supermarket giant warned it "may not be able to put food on the shelves if the situation goes pear-shaped," writes The Register's Simon Sharwood. From the report: Court documents seen by The Register assert that in January 2021 Tesco acquired perpetual licenses for VMware's vSphere Foundation and Cloud Foundation products, plus subscriptions to Virtzilla's Tanzu products, and agreed a contract for support services and software upgrades that run until 2026. Tesco claims VMware also agreed to give it an option to extend support services for an additional four years. All of this happened before Broadcom acquired VMware and stopped selling support services for software sold under perpetual licenses. Broadcom does sell support to those who sign for its new software subscriptions. The supermarket giant says Broadcom's subscriptions mean it must pay "excessive and inflated prices for virtualization software for which Tesco has already paid," and "is unable any longer to purchase stand-alone Virtualization Support Services for its Perpetually Licensed Software without also having to purchase duplicative subscription-based licenses for those same Software products which it already owns." The complaint also alleges that Tesco's contracts with VMware include eligibility for software upgrades, but that Broadcom won't let the retailer update its perpetual licenses to cover the new Cloud Foundation 9. The filing names Computacenter as a co-defendant as it was the reseller that Tesco relied on for software licenses, and the retailer feels it's breached contracts to supply software at a fixed price. Tesco's filing also mentions Broadcom's patch publication policy, which means users who don't acquire subscriptions can't receive all security updates and don't receive other fixes. The retailer thinks its contracts mean it is entitled to those updates. The filing suggests that lack of support is not just a legal matter, but may have wider implications because VMware software, and support for it "are essential for the operations and resilience of Tesco's business and its ability to supply groceries to consumers across the UK and Republic of Ireland." "VMware Virtualization Software underpins the servers and data systems that enable Tesco's stores and operations to function, hosting approximately 40,000 server workloads and connecting to, by way of illustration, tills in Tesco stores," the filing states. Tesco's filing warns that Broadcom, VMware, and Computacenter are each liable for at least $134 million damages, plus interest, and that the longer the dispute persists the higher damages will climb.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon.com must face a class action on behalf of hundreds of millions of U.S. consumers over claims that the online retail giant overcharged for products sold by third-party sellers, a federal judge in Seattle has ruled. U.S. District Judge John Chun in an order (PDF) unsealed on Friday certified a nationwide class involving 288 million customers and billions of transactions, marking one of the largest-ever in the United States. The class includes buyers in the United States who purchased five or more new goods from third-party sellers on Amazon since May 26, 2017. The consumers' 2021 lawsuit said Amazon violated antitrust law by restricting third-party sellers from offering their products for lower prices elsewhere on rival platforms while they are also for sale on Amazon. Amazon's policies have allowed the company to impose inflated fees on sellers, causing shoppers to pay higher prices for purchases, the lawsuit said. Amazon has denied any wrongdoing. It has already appealed Chun's class certification order, which was first issued under seal on Aug. 6. Amazon argued that the class was too large to be manageable and that the plaintiffs failed to show its alleged conduct had a widespread effect. Amazon also said that since 2019 it has not used a pricing program that the plaintiffs challenged. Chun found there was no evidence at this stage that the size of the class was overbroad. Other federal courts had certified class actions with millions or hundreds of millions of class members, the judge said.

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A federal judge spared Google from the harshest penalties in its antitrust case. The search giant can keep Chrome and avoid breaking up Android, but it has been barred from exclusive contracts and ordered to limit data sharing with rivals. CNBC reports: U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled against the most severe consequences that were proposed by the U.S. Department of Justice, including selling off its Chrome browser, which provides data that helps its advertising business deliver targeted ads. "Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment," the decision stated. "Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints." The company can make payments to preload products, but it cannot have exclusive contracts, the decision stated. The DOJ asked Google to stop the practice of "compelled syndication," which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones. [...] The judge ordered the parties to meet by September 10th for the final judgement. "Google will not be barred from making payments or offering other consideration to distribution partners for preloading or placement of Google Search, Chrome, or its GenAI products. Cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial -- in some cases, crippling -- downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers, which counsels against a broad payment ban." [...] Google said it will appeal the ruling, which would delay any potential penalties. Mehta ruled Tuesday that Google will have to make available certain search index data and user interaction data though "not ads data." The court narrowed the datasets Google will be required to share and said they must occur on "ordinary commercial terms that are consistent with Google's current syndication services."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: 4chan and Kiwi Farms sued the United Kingdom's Office of Communications (Ofcom) over its age verification law in U.S. federal court Wednesday, fulfilling a promise it announced on August 23. In the lawsuit, 4chan and Kiwi Farms claim that threats and fines they have received from Ofcom "constitute foreign judgments that would restrict speech under U.S. law." Both entities say in the lawsuit that they are wholly based in the U.S. and that they do not have any operations in the United Kingdom and are therefore not subject to local laws. Ofcom's attempts to fine and block 4chan and Kiwi Farms, and the lawsuit against Ofcom, highlight the messiness involved with trying to restrict access to specific websites or to force companies to comply with age verification laws. The lawsuit calls Ofcom an "industry-funded global censorship bureau." "Ofcom's ambitions are to regulate Internet communications for the entire world, regardless of where these websites are based or whether they have any connection to the UK," the lawsuit states. "On its website, Ofcom states that 'over 100,000 online services are likely to be in scope of the Online Safety Act -- from the largest social media platforms to the smallest community forum.'" [...] Ofcom began investigating 4chan over alleged violations of the Online Safety Act in June. On August 13, it announced a provisional decision and stated that 4chan had "contravened its duties" and then began to charge the site a penalty of [roughly $26,000] a day. Kiwi Farms has also been threatened with fines, the lawsuit states. "American citizens do not surrender our constitutional rights just because Ofcom sends us an e-mail. In the face of these foreign demands, our clients have bravely chosen to assert their constitutional rights," said Preston Byrne, one of the lawyers representing 4chan and Kiwi Farms. "We are aware of the lawsuit," an Ofcom spokesperson told 404 Media. "Under the Online Safety Act, any service that has links with the UK now has duties to protect UK users, no matter where in the world it is based. The Act does not, however, require them to protect users based anywhere else in the world."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A German court has told Apple to stop advertising its Watches as being carbon-neutral, ruling that this was misleading and could not fly under the country's competition law. Apple has been marketing its newest smartwatches as being carbon-neutral for nearly two years now, with an array of rationales. It claims that clean energy for manufacturing, along with greener materials and shipping, lop around three-quarters off the carbon emissions for each model of the Apple Watch. The remaining emissions are offset by the purchase of carbon credits, according to Apple. Deutsche Umwelthilfe (well, DUH – that's the acronym), a prominent environmental group, begged to differ on that last point. It applied for an injunction in May and Tuesday's ruling (in German), which will only be published in full later this week, led it to claim victory. The ruling means Apple can't advertise the Watch as a "CO2-neutral product" in Germany. [...] The ruling revolved around the Paraguayan forestry program that Apple claimed was offsetting some of the Watch's production emissions. The project involves commercial eucalyptus plantations on leased land, where the leases for three-quarters of the land will run out in 2029 with no guarantee of renewal. According to the court, consumers' expectations of carbon compensation schemes are shaped by the prominent 2015 Paris Agreement, which commits countries to achieving carbon neutrality by the second half of this century. It said consumers would therefore "assume" that the carbon-neutrality claims around the Apple Watch would mean neutrality was assured through 2050. That leaves a 21-year gap of uncertainty in this case. The Verified Carbon Standard program, in which Apple is participating, has a "pooled buffer account" scheme to hedge against this sort of uncertainty. However, the German court was not impressed, saying it would only allow Apple to monitor the situation after the leases run out, which is a far cry from definitely being able to keep offsetting those emissions if the plantation gets cleared.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Before 16-year-old Adam Raine died by suicide, he had spent months consulting ChatGPT about his plans to end his life. Now, his parents are filing the first known wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI, The New York Times reports. Many consumer-facing AI chatbots are programmed to activate safety features if a user expresses intent to harm themselves or others. But research has shown that these safeguards are far from foolproof. In Raine's case, while using a paid version of ChatGPT-4o, the AI often encouraged him to seek professional help or contact a help line. However, he was able to bypass these guardrails by telling ChatGPT that he was asking about methods of suicide for a fictional story he was writing. OpenAI has addressed these shortcomings on its blog. "As the world adapts to this new technology, we feel a deep responsibility to help those who need it most," the post reads. "We are continuously improving how our models respond in sensitive interactions." Still, the company acknowledged the limitations of the existing safety training for large models. "Our safeguards work more reliably in common, short exchanges," the post continues. "We have learned over time that these safeguards can sometimes be less reliable in long interactions: as the back-and-forth grows, parts of the model's safety training may degrade."

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Apple has filed a lawsuit against former Apple Watch staffer Dr. Chen Shi, alleging that he "conspired to steal Apple's trade secrets relating to Apple Watch and to disclose them to his new employers (Oppo)." The company alleges he downloaded 63 sensitive documents, attended technical meetings, and coordinated with Oppo to transfer proprietary information, though Oppo denies wrongdoing. The Verge reports: Ahead of starting his new job at Oppo, the employee, Dr. Chen Shi, attended "dozens" of meetings with technical members on the Apple Watch team to learn about their work and downloaded 63 documents "from a protected Box folder" that he loaded onto a USB drive, according to the lawsuit. Shi allegedly sent a message to Oppo saying that he was working to "collect as much information as possible" before starting his job. And he searched the internet for terms like "how to wipe out macbook" and "Can somebody see if I've opened a file on a shared drive?" from his Apple-issued MacBook before leaving the company. Shi was formerly a sensor system architect at Apple, and the company says he had "a front row seat to Apple's development of its cutting-edge health sensor technology, including highly confidential roadmaps, design and development documents, and specifications for ECG sensor technology." He now heads up a team working on sensing technology at Oppo -- which Apple says it learned because of "messages he left on his Apple-issued work iPhone." In his resignation letter to Apple, Shi said he was leaving "due to personal and family reasons." Via that iPhone, Apple also says it found messages from Oppo demonstrating that it "encouraged, approved, and agreed to Dr. Shi's plan to collect Apple's proprietary information before leaving Apple."

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Last week, following a recent U.S. Customs ruling, Apple reintroduced blood oxygen monitoring to certain Apple Watch models in the U.S., sidestepping an ITC import ban stemming from its legal dispute with medical device maker Masimo. Today, Masimo fired back with a new lawsuit against the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 9to5Mac reports: The company says US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) overstepped its authority and violated due process when it reversed its earlier decision on August 1 and allowed Apple to restore the feature. Moreover, Masimo says it found out about the decision when Apple publicly announced the return of the feature: "It has now come to light that CBP thereafter reversed itself without any meaningful justification, without any material change in circumstances, and without any notice to Masimo, let alone an opportunity for Masimo to be heard. CBP changed its position on Apple's watch-plus-iPhone redesign through an ex parte proceeding. Specifically, on August 1, 2025, CBP issued an 3 ex parte ruling permitting Apple to import devices that, when used with iPhones already in the United States, perform the same functionality that the ITC found to infringe Masimo's patents. Masimo only discovered this ruling on Thursday, August 14, 2025, when Apple publicly announced it would be reintroducing the pulse oximetry functionality through a software update." The company is now asking the court for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block the CBP's decision, and reinstate the original ruling that "determined that Apple's redesigned watches could be imported only to the extent the infringing functionality was completely disabled." As reported by Bloomberg Law, Masimo says the following in its supporting brief: "Each passing day that this unlawful ruling remains in effect irreparably deprives Masimo of its right to be free from unfair trade practices and to preserve its competitive standing in the U.S. marketplace." Masimo further argues that CBP's move "effectively nullified" the ITC's exclusion order against Apple. Apple's appeal of that ban is still pending before the Federal Circuit.

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In a pair of class actions filed this week, passengers from each coast quibbled with United Airlines and Delta Air Lines' policies charging extra for window seats that are not actually beside windows, instead offering a view of a blank aircraft wall. From a report: "Delta indicated to the plaintiff and class members that the particular seats they chose had a 'window'; even though Delta knew full well they did not," the plaintiffs taking on Delta said in an 18-page complaint filed in federal court in New York, accusing the airline of false advertising and deceptive business practices. Half of Delta's fleet of nearly 1,000 aircraft comprises Boeing 737s, Boeing 757s and Airbus A321s -- all of which have at least one wall-adjacent seat with no window, according to the plaintiffs. It's where vertical air conditioning riser ducts are located, making putting a window there impossible, the competing Alaska Airlines explains on its website. But unlike Alaska and others, the plaintiffs complain, Delta advertises the seats as having a window, offering them as a "window seat" option on its seat map during checkout.

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Apple has reintroduced blood oxygen monitoring to certain Apple Watch models in the U.S. by shifting the feature's calculations to the paired iPhone, sidestepping an ITC import ban stemming from its legal dispute with medical device maker Masimo. TechCrunch reports: Blood oxygen data will be measured and calculated on the user's paired iPhone, and results can be viewed in the Respiratory section of the Health app. This means users won't be able to view the data on their Apple Watch, as they'll need to do so on their iPhone. Apple says the update announced today is enabled by a recent U.S. Customs ruling, which means that the tech giant is allowed to import Apple Watches with the redesigned Blood Oxygen feature. The change doesn't affect previously sold models with the original version of the feature or units bought outside the U.S. The redesigned feature only applies to Apple Watches that were sold after the ITC import ban took effect in early 2024. These users can access the redesigned Blood Oxygen feature through an iPhone and Apple Watch software update coming on Thursday.

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Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud over the $40 billion collapse of TerraUSD and Luna in 2022. Reuters reports: Kwon, 33, who co-founded Singapore-based Terraform Labs and developed the TerraUSD and Luna currencies, entered the plea at a court hearing in New York before U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer. He had pleaded not guilty in January to a nine-count indictment charging him with securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Accused of misleading investors in 2021 about TerraUSD - a so-called stablecoin designed to maintain a value of $1 - Kwon pleaded guilty to the two counts under an agreement with the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office, which brought the charges. He faces up to 25 years in prison when Engelmayer sentences him on December 11, though prosecutor Kimberly Ravener said the government had agreed to advocate for a prison term of no more than 12 years provided he accepts responsibility for his crimes. "I made false and misleading statements about why it regained its peg by failing to disclose a trading firm's role in restoring that peg," Kwon said in court. "What I did was wrong."

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ole_timer shares a report from the New York Times: Investigators have uncovered evidence that Russia is at least partly responsible for a recent hack of the computer system that manages federal court documents, including highly sensitive records with information that could reveal sources and people charged with national security crimes, according to several people briefed on the breach. It is not clear what entity is responsible, whether an arm of Russian intelligence might be behind the intrusion or if other countries were also involved, which some of the people familiar with the matter described as a yearslong effort to infiltrate the system. Some of the searches included midlevel criminal cases in the New York City area and several other jurisdictions, with some cases involving people with Russian and Eastern European surnames. Administrators with the court system recently informed Justice Department officials, clerks and chief judges in federal courts that "persistent and sophisticated cyber threat actors have recently compromised sealed records," according to an internal department memo reviewed by The New York Times. The administrators also advised those officials to quickly remove the most sensitive documents from the system. "This remains an URGENT MATTER that requires immediate action," officials wrote, referring to guidance that the Justice Department had issued in early 2021 after the system was first infiltrated. Documents related to criminal activity with an overseas tie, across at least eight district courts, were initially believed to have been targeted. Last month, the chief judges of district courts across the country were quietly warned to move those kinds of cases off the regular document-management system, according to officials briefed on the request. They were initially told not to discuss the matter with other judges in their districts.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They've warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement. Last week, Anthropic petitioned (PDF) to appeal the class certification, urging the court to weigh questions that the district court judge, William Alsup, seemingly did not. Alsup allegedly failed to conduct a "rigorous analysis" of the potential class and instead based his judgment on his "50 years" of experience, Anthropic said. If the appeals court denies the petition, Anthropic argued, the emerging company may be doomed. As Anthropic argued, it now "faces hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages liability at trial in four months" based on a class certification rushed at "warp speed" that involves "up to seven million potential claimants, whose works span a century of publishing history," each possibly triggering a $150,000 fine. Confronted with such extreme potential damages, Anthropic may lose its rights to raise valid defenses of its AI training, deciding it would be more prudent to settle, the company argued. And that could set an alarming precedent, considering all the other lawsuits generative AI (GenAI) companies face over training on copyrighted materials, Anthropic argued. "One district court's errors should not be allowed to decide the fate of a transformational GenAI company like Anthropic or so heavily influence the future of the GenAI industry generally," Anthropic wrote. "This Court can and should intervene now." In a court filing Thursday, the Consumer Technology Association and the Computer and Communications Industry Association backed Anthropic, warning the appeals court that "the district court's erroneous class certification" would threaten "immense harm not only to a single AI company, but to the entire fledgling AI industry and to America's global technological competitiveness." According to the groups, allowing copyright class actions in AI training cases will result in a future where copyright questions remain unresolved and the risk of "emboldened" claimants forcing enormous settlements will chill investments in AI. "Such potential liability in this case exerts incredibly coercive settlement pressure for Anthropic," industry groups argued, concluding that "as generative AI begins to shape the trajectory of the global economy, the technology industry cannot withstand such devastating litigation. The United States currently may be the global leader in AI development, but that could change if litigation stymies investment by imposing excessive damages on AI companies."

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A federal judge struck down California's strict anti-deepfake election law, citing Section 230 protections rather than First Amendment concerns. Politico reports: [Judge John Mendez] also said he intended to overrule a second law, which would require labels on digitally altered campaign materials and ads, for violating the First Amendment. [...] The first law would have blocked online platforms from hosting deceptive, AI-generated content related to an election in the run-up to the vote. It came amid heightened concerns about the rapid advancement and accessibility of artificial intelligence, allowing everyday users to quickly create more realistic images and videos, and the potential political impacts. But opponents of the measures ... also argued the restrictions could infringe upon freedom of expression. The original challenge was filed by the creator of the video, Christopher Kohls, on First Amendment grounds, with X later joining the case after [Elon Musk] said the measures were "designed to make computer-generated parody illegal." The satirical right-wing news website the Babylon Bee and conservative social media site Rumble also joined the suit. Mendez said the first law, penned by Democratic state Assemblymember Marc Berman, conflicted with the oft-cited Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which shields online platforms from liability for what third parties post on their sites. "They don't have anything to do with these videos that the state is objecting to," Mendez said of sites like X that host deepfakes. But the judge did not address the First Amendment claims made by Kohls, saying it was not necessary in order to strike down the law on Section 230 grounds. "I'm simply not reaching that issue," Mendez told the plaintiffs' attorneys. [...] "I think the statute just fails miserably in accomplishing what it would like to do," Mendez said, adding he would write an official opinion on that law in the coming weeks. Laws restricting speech have to pass a strict test, including whether there are less restrictive ways of accomplishing the state's goals. Mendez questioned whether approaches that were less likely to chill free speech would be better. "It's become a censorship law and there is no way that is going to survive," Mendez added.

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A Manhattan jury convicted Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm on Wednesday of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transfer business, though jurors deadlocked on charges of money laundering conspiracy and sanctions violations after three days of deliberation. Federal prosecutors alleged Storm helped cybercriminals launder more than $1 billion through the cryptocurrency mixing platform, which launched in 2019 as a decentralized protocol designed to obscure transaction origins by pooling and redistributing funds through smart contracts.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: OpenAI is preparing to raise what could be its final defense to stop The New York Times from digging through a spectacularly broad range of ChatGPT logs to hunt for any copyright-infringing outputs that could become the most damning evidence in the hotly watched case. In a joint letter (PDF) Thursday, both sides requested to hold a confidential settlement conference on August 7. Ars confirmed with the NYT's legal team that the conference is not about settling the case but instead was scheduled to settle one of the most disputed aspects of the case: news plaintiffs searching through millions of ChatGPT logs. That means it's possible that this week, ChatGPT users will have a much clearer understanding of whether their private chats might be accessed in the lawsuit. In the meantime, OpenAI has broken down (PDF) the "highly complex" process required to make deleted chats searchable in order to block the NYT's request for broader access. Previously, OpenAI had vowed to stop what it deemed was the NYT's attempt to conduct "mass surveillance" of ChatGPT users. But ultimately, OpenAI lost its fight to keep news plaintiffs away from all ChatGPT logs. After that loss, OpenAI appears to have pivoted and is now doing everything in its power to limit the number of logs accessed in the case -- short of settling -- as its customers fretted over serious privacy concerns. For the most vulnerable users, the lawsuit threatened to expose ChatGPT outputs from sensitive chats that OpenAI had previously promised would be deleted. Most recently, OpenAI floated a compromise, asking the court to agree that news organizations didn't need to search all ChatGPT logs. The AI company cited the "only expert" who has so far weighed in on what could be a statistically relevant, appropriate sample size -- computer science researcher Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick. He suggested that a sample of 20 million logs would be sufficient to determine how frequently ChatGPT users may be using the chatbot to regurgitate articles and circumvent news sites' paywalls. But the NYT and other news organizations rejected the compromise, OpenAI said in a filing (PDF) yesterday. Instead, news plaintiffs have made what OpenAI said was an "extraordinary request that OpenAI produce the individual log files of 120 million ChatGPT consumer conversations." That's six times more data than Berg-Kirkpatrick recommended, OpenAI argued. Complying with the request threatens to "increase the scope of user privacy concerns" by delaying the outcome of the case "by months," OpenAI argued. If the request is granted, it would likely trouble many users by extending the amount of time that users' deleted chats will be stored and potentially making them vulnerable to a breach or leak. As negotiations potentially end this week, OpenAI's co-defendant, Microsoft, has picked its own fight with the NYT over its internal ChatGPT equivalent tool that could potentially push the NYT to settle the disputes over ChatGPT logs.

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Rivian has filed a federal lawsuit in Ohio to challenge a state law preventing it from selling electric vehicles directly to consumers, arguing the rule is anti-competitive and outdated. The law currently protects legacy dealerships while allowing Tesla a special carve-out, and Rivian wants similar rights to apply for a direct-sales license in the state. TechCrunch reports: "Ohio's prohibition of Rivian's direct-sales-only business model is irrational in the extreme: it reduces competition, decreases consumer choice, and drives up consumer costs and inconvenience -- all of which harm consumers -- with literally no countervailing benefit," lawyers for the company wrote in the complaint. Rivian is asking the court to allow the company to apply for a dealership license so it can sell vehicles directly. Ohio customers have to buy from Rivian vehicles from locations in other states where direct sales are allowed. The cars are then shipped to Rivian service centers within Ohio. Allowing Rivian to sell directly would not be treading new legal ground, the company argues in its complaint. Tesla has had a license to sell in Ohio since 2013 and can sell directly to consumers. What's stopping Rivian is a 2014 law passed by the state's legislature. That law, which Rivian says came after an intense lobbying effort by the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association (OADA), effectively gave Tesla a carve-out and blocked any future manufacturers from acquiring the necessary dealership licenses. "Consumer choice is a bedrock principle of America's economy. Ohio's archaic prohibition against the direct-sales of vehicles is unconstitutional, irrational, and harms Ohioans by reducing competition and choice and driving up costs and inconvenience," Mike Callahan, Rivian's chief administrative officer, said in a statement.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A federal judge reprimanded lawyers with a high-priced firm defending Alabama's prison system for using ChatGPT to write court filings with "completely made up" case citations. U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco publicly reprimanded three lawyers with Butler Snow, the law firm hired to defend Alabama and other jurisdictions in lawsuits against their prison systems. The order sanctioned William R. Lunsford, the head of the firm division that handles prison litigation, along with Matthew B. Reeves and William J. Cranford. "Fabricating legal authority is serious misconduct that demands a serious sanction," Manasco wrote in the Wednesday sanctions order. Manasco removed the three from participating in the case where the false citations were filed and directed them to share the sanctions order with clients, opposing lawyers and judges in all of their other cases. She also referred the matter to the Alabama State Bar for possible disciplinary action. [...] "In simpler terms, the citations were completely made up," Manasco wrote. She added that using the citations without verifying their accuracy was "recklessness in the extreme." The filings in question were made in a lawsuit filed by an inmate who was stabbed on multiple occasions at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County. The lawsuit alleges that prison officials are failing to keep inmates safe.

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A federal court has denied requests by Ryan Rothholz to dismiss or transfer an Activision lawsuit targeting his alleged Call of Duty cheating software operation. Rothholz, who operated under the online handle "Lerggy," submitted motions in June and earlier this month seeking to dismiss the case or move it to the Southern District of New York, but both were rejected due to filing errors. The May lawsuit alleges Rothholz created "Lergware" hacking software that enabled players to cheat by kicking opponents offline, then rebranded to develop "GameHook" after receiving a cease and desist letter in June 2023. Court filings say he sold a "master key" for $350 that facilitated cheating across multiple games. The hacks "are parasitic in nature," the complaint said, alleging violations of the game's terms of service, copyright law and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that NFTs qualify as "goods" under the Lanham Act, entitling them to trademark protection. The decision in Yuga Labs v. Ryder Ripps establishes that brand owners can sue NFT copycats with the same legal tools used against counterfeit sneakers or handbags.

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