Thomas C. Goldstein, a nationally known Supreme Court advocate and co-founder of SCOTUSblog, has been sentenced in federal court to 72 months in prison for tax crimes and mortgage fraud. The court also revoked his bond and remanded him into custody at sentencing, an unusually sharp procedural turn that underscores how seriously the court viewed the conduct and the need for immediate detention.

The case stands out not only because of the sentence length, but because of the defendant’s stature in the legal profession.

The U.S. Department of Justice on July 9 announced prison sentences for Neil Suresh Chandran and Bryan Lee in a sweeping investor-fraud case that prosecutors said caused more than $45 million in losses to over 10,000 investors. According to the government, the defendants promoted false narratives about extraordinary company valuations and imminent buyouts, using those claims to induce investments on a massive scale.

The sentencings are notable not only for the size of the alleged fraud, but also for the victim count.

The Alabama State Bar has issued formal ethics guidance on lawyers’ use of artificial intelligence, offering one of the clearest signals yet that AI is no longer just a technology issue for law firms — it is a professional responsibility issue.

The opinion reportedly focuses on two especially sensitive areas: billing and client communication.

Zoom Communications, Inc. has launched a new inter partes review at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, opening docket IPR2026-00424 on July 24, 2026. While the petition is newly filed and the full merits record is still developing, the case is already worth watching for companies and counsel focused on communications technology, software patents, and parallel district court/PTAB strategy.

At this stage, the key takeaway is straightforward: Zoom is asking the PTAB to reconsider the validity of an issued patent through the IPR process, a forum that remains one of the most important tools for accused infringers facing high-stakes patent assertions.

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. has filed a new inter partes review petition at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, opening IPR2026-00432 on July 20, 2026.

The Justice Department has proposed an antitrust settlement with Willow Bridge Property Company LLC, one of the country’s largest landlords, in a case that underscores a continuing enforcement priority: the use of pricing algorithms and shared competitively sensitive information in rental housing markets.

According to the government, the case centers on allegations that Willow Bridge participated in information sharing and coordination practices affecting apartment rents.

23andMe’s data-breach exposure grew again this week, as a coalition of more than 40 state attorneys general announced they will share in an additional $18 million resolution over alleged unreasonable security practices. The state deal follows a bankruptcy court’s approval of a separate $46.75 million settlement with private claimants, bringing the combined fallout to $64.75 million and underscoring how cyber incidents can trigger overlapping liability across private litigation, regulatory enforcement, and insolvency proceedings.

The underlying civil litigation has been centralized in the Northern District of California as IN RE: 23ANDME, Inc., Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, a multidistrict proceeding that has become a key docket for watching how courts handle privacy claims tied to alleged security failures involving highly sensitive consumer data.

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.