US District Judge William Alsup, who has presided over Silicon Valley’s biggest legal battles since he was appointed in 1999, said today he will likely assume inactive status by the end of the year. He is an institution on the ND Cal bench. news.bloomberglaw.com/tech-and-tel...

Judge William Alsup in San Francisco this afternoon blocked the Trump administration from firing some probationary federal workers. That includes workers at NPS, NSF, BLM, and the VA, but not all agencies. "Probationary workers are the lifeblood of our government," Alsup said.

It took just over 5 years, but WhatsApp is now victorious in its lawsuit against Israeli intelligence firm NSO Group, maker of the notorious Pegasus spying software used by governments around the world. A trial on damages is set for March next year in ND Cal.

NEW: A ByteDance whistleblower who exposed the CCP's backdoor access to company data is being sanction by a federal court for lying in his deposition and fabricating a key witness. Yintao "Roger" Yu engaged in "obstructive and mendacious" conduct in his wrongful firing suit against the company.

Interesting opinion out yesterday from Judge Orrick in ND Cal. He says AI-based content moderation systems used by X are protected by Section 230. “No court has held otherwise," he says. SCOTUS has contemplated AI content moderation but provided no guidance, he says.

The 9th Circuit will stop at nothing to administer justice lol. The San Francisco tsunami alert came in the middle of oral arguments I was watching this morning. Judge Bress: "Welcome to San Francisco." "That's a first for us with the tsunami warning, but why don't we go ahead."

Our profile of NetChoice, the small but aggressive tech industry lobby shop with two cases before the US Supreme Court. With about a dozen employees, it's punching far above its weight in influencing internet policy through litigation:

Snapchat doesn't get Section 230 protection in a lawsuit claiming the app connected kids with drug dealers who sold them fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills that caused deadly overdoses. Here's a ruling from the LA County Superior Court: aboutblaw.com/bb9O

Matthew Butterick has been called a Luddite. Others applaud him for leading the fight to hold AI accountable. Here's the story of how a font designer and lawyer found himself at the center of a battle that may alter the foundation and future of the AI industry.

The judge overseeing Sarah Silverman’s AI copyright case against Meta was prepared to dismiss most of her claims at a hearing today in San Francisco. But he was far more friendly to her core infringement theory: that Meta used pirated books to train its large language model.

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is overseeing hundreds of youth addiction suits against Big Tech, is a veteran of high profile tech disputes, having overseen the Epic Games v. Apple antitrust trial. One thing is for sure: She has zero tolerance for legal gamesmanship. My profile:

The US Copyright Office has released almost ten thousand comments it received for its generative AI-copyright inquiry. All the major AI firms being sued for infringement have filed comments, providing one of the most comprehensive pictures yet of where the industry stands on copyright issues.

Big Section 230 news to end the week: Hundreds of personal injury lawsuits claiming TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube cause addiction and contribute to mental health harms among adolescents can partially advance in California state court. news.bloomberglaw.com/tech-and-tel...

Bipartisan Senate group today circulated a draft of a national right-of-publicity bill: www.coons.senate.gov/imo/media/do... It would include post-mortem rights, which varies across existing state right-of-publicity laws.