In a notable turn for crypto enforcement, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it is joining Gemini Trust Company LLC in seeking relief from judgment in Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Gemini Trust Company, LLC, pending in the Southern District of New York. According to the agency, a post hoc review concluded that the complaint would not have been filed under the CFTC’s current enforcement standards.

That is a striking position for any regulator to take after obtaining a judgment or settlement, and it immediately raises questions about how far agencies may go in revisiting prior enforcement actions when policy priorities change.

Pinterest, Inc. has filed a new inter partes review petition at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, opening IPR2026-00366 on May 22, 2026. For patent litigators and in-house IP teams, the filing is worth watching not only for the substantive patentability issues it may raise, but also for what it could signal about Pinterest’s broader litigation and defensive patent strategy.

At this stage, the PTAB docket identifies the proceeding by petitioner name—Pinterest, Inc.—but practitioners should review the underlying petition papers on Docket Alarm for the specific patent number, challenged claims, and real-party-in-interest disclosures as they become available.

A Texas state court has ruled that a judge may decline to perform same-sex marriages based on sincerely held religious beliefs, a closely watched decision at the intersection of judicial ethics, equal-treatment principles, and religious-liberty protections. The case stems from disciplinary action against Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley, who challenged a public warning issued by the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct after she said she would not officiate same-sex weddings.

For court watchers, the dispute has long been about more than one judge’s wedding calendar.

The Department of Justice has recently underscored two of its core criminal-enforcement priorities: large-scale financial fraud and organized violent crime. In one matter, financier Greg Lindberg was sentenced to 12 years in prison in connection with bribery and a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme tied to his business empire. In another, federal prosecutors in Indianapolis unsealed a sweeping RICO indictment against 12 alleged members of the “Crown Hill Enterprise,” charging crimes that include murder, kidnapping, arson, drug trafficking, and firearms offenses.

For legal professionals, the pairing is notable.

Pinterest, Inc. has filed a new inter partes review petition, IPR2026-00365, at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board on May 22, 2026. The proceeding puts another PTAB spotlight on the increasingly important area of platform recommendation and content-delivery technology—an area where social media, e-commerce, and advertising companies continue to face significant patent assertion risk.

At this stage, the publicly available docket reflects that Pinterest is the petitioner, but practitioners will want to watch closely for the identification of the patent owner, the specific patent claims challenged, and the prior art combinations asserted in the petition as the record develops.

Appellee MIT has asked the First Circuit for summary disposition in appeal No. 26-1510, a procedural move designed to end the appeal without full merits briefing or oral argument. In practical terms, the motion argues that the appellant’s position is so clearly foreclosed—whether by settled law, lack of appellate jurisdiction, waiver, or obvious deficiencies on the record—that the court can dispose of the case now.

While the docket entry does not spell out the underlying dispute, the filing itself is notable because summary disposition motions are not routine.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Eli Lilly’s constitutional challenge to the False Claims Act’s qui tam mechanism, preserving one of the government’s most potent civil fraud enforcement tools. The petition arose from litigation brought by whistleblower Ronald Streck, who accused Lilly of misconduct tied to Medicaid drug rebate reporting.

By denying review, the Court leaves in place lower-court rulings that allowed the case to proceed and, more broadly, avoids reopening a recurring defense-side attack on the False Claims Act’s structure.

A May 15 filing in Daitona Carter, Federal Circuit No. 26-1721, spotlights one of the most consequential forms of interim appellate relief: an emergency stay pending appeal.

A federal judge has closed President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury, but not without raising pointed questions about how the case ended and whether it ever presented a conventional adversarial dispute.

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. has filed a new inter partes review petition at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, opening PTAB proceeding IPR2026-00364 on May 15, 2026. At this stage, the filing itself is the key development: the petition signals that Palo Alto Networks is seeking to invalidate claims of an asserted patent through the Board’s administrative trial process rather than litigating patentability exclusively in district court.

The currently available docket information identifies Palo Alto Networks, Inc. as the petitioner, but practitioners will want to watch closely for the patent owner’s appearance, the specific patent number at issue, and the claim set Palo Alto Networks has targeted.

A D.C. Circuit panel appeared deeply skeptical of the Justice Department’s effort to revive Trump-era executive orders targeting WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, Jenner Block, and Susman Godfrey—an unusually direct clash between presidential power and the independence of major law firms.

At issue are executive actions that, according to the firms, penalize them for past client representations, internal employment and policy choices, and perceived political affiliations.

Apple Inc. has launched a new inter partes review at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, filing IPR2026-00316 on May 18, 2026. As of the initial docket entry, the proceeding is styled simply under Apple’s name, and practitioners will want to watch for the petition, mandatory notices, and any patent owner preliminary response to flesh out the dispute. You can track the docket here: View full case on Docket Alarm.

At this early stage, the publicly available case caption confirms the petitioner—Apple Inc.—but the docket details provided here do not yet identify the challenged patent number or the patent owner by name.

Illinois lawmakers are advancing a bill that would place new guardrails between law firms and outside capital providers, a notable development in the broader national debate over who can influence — and profit from — the delivery of legal services. The proposal is aimed at preserving attorney independence by creating ethical firewalls between firms and entities such as private equity investors, management service organizations, and other nonlawyer business partners.

At its core, the legislation responds to a growing concern: even where formal ownership rules prohibit nonlawyers from owning law firms, financial arrangements can still give outside investors significant leverage over operations, staffing, compensation, and strategic decisions.

Meta Platforms, Inc. has filed a new inter partes review petition at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, opening IPR2026-00347 on May 13, 2026. At this early stage, the PTAB docket reflects the filing of the petition, but practitioners should expect the key details—most importantly the specific patent being challenged, the patent owner’s identity, and the precise prior-art combinations—to come into sharper focus as the docket develops.

Even from the initial filing, this is a proceeding worth watching.

A May 16 filing in the Federal Circuit shows appellant Daitona Carter moving for an emergency stay pending appeal under Rule 8/18—an aggressive form of interim relief that can quickly become the most important dispute in an appeal’s early days. View full case on Docket Alarm

At a basic level, a stay pending appeal asks the appellate court to pause the effect of a lower tribunal’s order while the appeal proceeds.