Bloomberg Law ” Airbnb Inc. says the IRS is improperly valuing its intellectual property to impose billions in taxes and penalties. The company petitioned US Tax Court on July 30 to contest an IRS determination that it underpaid its taxes by $1.33 billion for 2013 as well as the $573 million Read more…
Bloomberg Law The Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok is battling a potential US ban with the signature tools of American democracy — lawyers, lobbyists and money. TikTok has deployed Washington power brokers and $1,500-an-hour attorneys to fend off a new law barring the app unless its Beijing-based parent, ByteDance Ltd., divests. Read more…
Bloomberg Law “OpenAI Inc. escaped a copyright lawsuit from a group of open-source programmers after they voluntarily dismissed their case against the company in federal court. The programmers, who allege the generative AI programming tool Copilot was trained on their code without proper attribution, filed their notice of voluntary dismissal Thursday, Read more…
Bloomberg Law ” Volkswagen Group of America Inc.—a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG—is entitled to attorneys’ fees from a dismissed VDPP LLC lawsuit that accused the German automaker of incorporating patented camera-related technology into surround-view monitoring systems in its vehicles. VDPP and its attorney, William P. Ramey III of Ramey LLP, engaged in abusive Read more…
Bloomberg Law “HP Inc. convinced a federal judge in Austin, Texas, to transfer a patent monetizer’s suit over allegedly infringing laptops, desktops, monitors, and docking stations to Northern California where the company is headquartered. Universal Connectivity Technologies Inc., a unit of Canadian patent owner Wi-LAN Inc., sued HP in late Read more…
Bloomberg Law “The US Supreme Court curbed the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ability to press complaints before in-house judges, saying defendants have a constitutional right to make their case to a federal jury when the agency is seeking financial penalties. The 6-3 decision could reduce the commission’s leverage to extract Read more…
Bloomberg Law “A Starbucks Corp. barista sufficiently alleged a hostile work environment claim against the coffee chain after saying it failed to punish a supervisor that would go on to sexually assault her when she was a teenager. The claim had been dismissed because the barista—M.H.—had said that Starbucks at Read more…
Bloomberg Law “A $30 billion settlement between Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc. and retailers to cap credit-card swipe fees is likely to be rejected by a federal judge in Brooklyn, a setback in the two decade-long litigation. US District Judge Margo Brodie in Brooklyn, New York said at a hearing Thursday Read more…
Bloomberg Law The US is opening antitrust investigations into two of the world’s most valuable companies, Microsoft Corp. and Nvidia Corp., over their dominance of the rapidly emerging field of artificial intelligence, according to people familiar with the matter. Microsoft has poured more than $13 billion into its partnership with Read more…
Bloomberg Law National banks will have to contend with more litigation to assess whether state consumer protection laws apply to them after a US Supreme Court unanimous decision on Thursday. The high court’s ruling in Cantero v. Bank of America NA reignites a fight over bank regulation that dates back Read more…