Meta Platforms has asked the Ninth Circuit to halt proceedings in the trial court while its appeal moves forward, a procedural step that can have outsized strategic consequences in high-stakes litigation. The filing—“Motion to Stay Underlying Proceedings”—signals that Meta believes continued district court activity would undermine the value of the appellate process or impose burdens that cannot be effectively remedied later.

At a basic level, a stay motion asks the appellate court to preserve the status quo.

A new inter partes review, IPR2026-00401, was filed on July 22, 2026, at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board against Zhuhai CosMX Battery Co., Ltd., putting another battery-related patent dispute on the radar for companies operating in the energy storage and electronics supply chain. For patent professionals tracking PTAB activity in advanced manufacturing and battery technology, this case is one to watch closely.

At this early stage, the publicly available docket information identifies the proceeding by the patent owner’s name, Zhuhai CosMX Battery Co., Ltd., but the petition materials will be the key source for confirming the specific patent number, the challenged claims, the identity of the petitioner, and the precise invalidity theories asserted.

A California-led coalition of 12 states has filed a federal antitrust suit in the Northern District of California seeking to block Paramount’s proposed $110 billion deal involving Warner Bros.

Foleon Inc. has launched a new inter partes review at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, filing IPR2026-00403 on July 16, 2026. The proceeding puts at issue a patent that appears tied to digital publishing, online content creation, or related software-driven presentation technology—an area where PTAB challenges often turn on how broadly the patent owner framed routine web-based functionality and whether the prior art already taught the claimed implementation.

At this early stage, the publicly available docket entry identifies the petitioner as Foleon Inc., but practitioners will want to monitor the record closely for the petition itself, which should spell out the specific patent being challenged, the named patent owner, and the exact claims targeted for review.

Amgen has agreed to pay $74 million to resolve a shareholder class action in the Southern District of New York alleging the company waited too long to disclose a potential IRS tax exposure that plaintiffs said totaled $10.7 billion. The settlement is preliminary and still must be approved by the court, but it is already notable as a significant recent securities case resolution involving disclosure timing rather than an underlying product, accounting, or operational event.

The suit centered on a familiar securities-law theory: investors claimed they were not given timely and accurate information about a material risk facing the company.

A federal judge in South Dakota has preliminarily enjoined enforcement of a state abortion-advertising restriction against a reproductive-health education nonprofit and an attorney, concluding the challengers are likely to succeed on their First Amendment claims. The ruling is another important entry in the growing body of post-Dobbs litigation testing how far states can go when regulating not just abortion procedures, but speech about abortion.

At this stage, the court did not finally decide the statute’s constitutionality.

The Justice Department has filed a proposed consent decree in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas to resolve alleged Clean Water Act violations arising from the 2022 Keystone Pipeline rupture in Kansas. The case targets the owner and operator of the pipeline system, now associated with South Bow, and centers on one of the most closely watched pipeline spill events in recent years.

According to the government, the settlement would address civil environmental claims tied to the rupture and the operator’s spill-response obligations.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s July 14, 2026 institution decision in IPR2026-00276 granted inter partes review, finding that the petitioner made the required threshold showing that at least one challenged claim is reasonably likely to be unpatentable.

The Justice Department has agreed to pay $180 million to the Municipality of Anchorage to resolve a long-running dispute over the Port of Anchorage expansion project, bringing an end to litigation that began in 2014. The resolution closes out one of the more notable federal-liability infrastructure cases in recent years, both because of the size of the payment and because it centers on alleged failures tied to a major public works project.

The underlying case, ANCHORAGE, A MUNICIPAL CORPORATION v. USA, has been closely watched by lawyers handling claims involving federal project participation, municipal plaintiffs, and damages arising from large-scale construction and engineering failures.

The Justice Department’s sentencing of a former adviser to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is one of the clearest recent reminders that insider-trading exposure is not limited to public-company executives, bankers, or hedge funds. It also reaches government and quasi-government insiders who misuse market-sensitive information obtained through positions of trust.

According to the government’s announcement, the former Fed adviser received a federal prison sentence after being prosecuted for exploiting confidential economic information.

A federal judge in the Southern District of Florida has blocked a proposed settlement in President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department, finding the case was pursued for an “improper purpose” and referring the lawyers involved for possible disciplinary review.

A federal judge in Miami has thrown out a purported settlement between President Donald Trump and the IRS, finding that the underlying lawsuit was brought in bad faith and that the agreement cannot be relied on in future proceedings. In the same order, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams reportedly referred the lawyers involved to disciplinary authorities—an unusually sharp response that raises the stakes well beyond the immediate dispute.

The ruling is notable for two reasons.

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A federal judge in Washington has delivered an unusually sharp rebuke in litigation tied to President Donald Trump, ruling that a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service was brought for an improper purpose and appeared aimed at giving legal cover to a settlement that would grant special benefits to Trump-affiliated parties.

The ruling goes beyond dismissal or adverse merits findings.

The Department of Justice has unveiled one of the year’s largest coordinated health care enforcement actions: the 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, which includes charges against 455 defendants nationwide, among them 90 physicians and other licensed professionals. Prosecutors say the cases involve more than $6.5 billion in alleged false claims, underscoring the scale of the government’s continuing focus on fraud in federal health care programs.

The sweep was coordinated across U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, with participation from DOJ’s Criminal Division, HHS-OIG, CMS, and other federal and state enforcement partners.