On Friday, a Federal Court issued a permanent injunction halting the destruction of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The ruling by United States District Court chief judge John J. McConnell, Jr. immediately nullifies all actions that the Trump Administration took to dismantle the agency, and blocks them from being imposed in the future. Twenty-one states filed a lawsuit against the president for his efforts to eliminate the IMLS and as well as the Minority Business Development Agency, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. In March, an executive order withheld appropriated funds […]
Legal
OverDrive Sues OpenAI For Trademark Infringement Over Sora
OverDrive filed suit against OpenAI in a Northern Ohio Federal Court on Wednesday, alleging infringement of their trademark for the Sora brand, along with charges of unfair competition and deceptive trade practices. OverDrive’s Sora app for schools has been in use for over seven years, and was trademarked in 2022, while OpenAI’s Sora is their text-to-image creator first launched in December 2024. OverDrive writes in their complaint: “OpenAI’s recently launched AI text-to-video generation software app under the exact same name, Sora, using a confusingly similar icon, color palette, and visual identity, infringes OverDrive’s trademark rights and damages the integrity of […]
Judge Stops Third-Party Firm from Misleading Anthropic Class Members
Judge William Alsup has ruled that a third-party law firm must correct its misleading information about the Anthropic lawsuit and settlement. Plaintiffs had accused ClaimsHero of soliciting authors to opt out of the settlement with website messaging and social media ads, which Alsup calls “materially misleading and confusing” in a new filing. ClaimsHero must delete the Anthropic page on its website and stop running all ads. It also has to turn over “all marketing materials and communications regarding the Settlement directed to Class Members” and provide Class Counsel with the names and contact information for anyone who engaged with the firm […]
Baker & Taylor Sends WARN Notice To Georgia Employees; Will Lay Off 289
As part of its closure, Baker & Taylor has sent a WARN notice to Georgia employees, announcing that it will shut down its Commerce facility and lay off 289 workers. Previously, the company sent notices to 112 employees at their headquarters in North Carolina and another 67 in New Jersey. (In other recent New Jersey notices, Audible will lay off 67 people by January 26, 2026.) As previously reported, Baker & Taylor has not filed for bankruptcy, and is handling liquidation privately with their main bank lender, CIT Northbridge Credit. B&T will not provide any severance to employees, and has terminated benefits […]
Plaintiffs Gain Access to Documents to See If OpenAI Willfully Infringed
Last month, in the New York-based class action lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement, Judge Ona T. Wang ordered the tech company to turn over internal messages that discuss the deletion of the LibGen dataset that was used to train their LLM. Plaintiffs argue that the messages may suggest that the company engaged in willful copyright infringement. If that’s the case, class members could be entitled to damages of up to $150,000 per work–the maximum allowed by the Copyright Act. “The stakes reach beyond a hefty damages award,” Bloomberg Law reports. “If the court finds that OpenAI destroyed evidence anticipating […]
Third-Party Law Firm Encourages Authors to Opt-Out of Anthropic Settlement
Plaintiffs in the Anthropic lawsuit have filed a motion for the court to stop a third-party law firm from soliciting authors to opt-out of the class settlement. ClaimsHero, an Arizona law firm with no connection to the case, purports to handle class action lawsuit claims on behalf of class members. They launched a page specifically for the Anthropic case, which plaintiffs argue does the opposite in a “bait-and-switch scheme”: anyone who signs up with ClaimsHero authorizes the company to opt them–and any copyright co-owner–out of the settlement and relinquish the right to any funds. “Class Members unfortunate enough to be […]