Today's [7/20] Cases

Ah, so many interesting new cases and case developments... Here are my top five:

1. Medical Advocates for Healthy Air et al. v. US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - 4:11-cv-03515

• The EPA was called out (by the Sierra Club and the Medical Advocates for Healthy Air) for not keeping a deadline of determining whether or not the San Joaquin Valley's anti-ozone pollution efforts had met the national (acceptable) standard.




Pg. 1: Complaint Intro (from Law360.com)



2. In Re: Digital Music Antitrust Litigation - 1:06-md-01780

• Judge L. Preska dismissed claims that Time Warner, Bertelsmann, and Sony were secretly corroborating to raise digital music prices; the plaintiffs are only allowed to file suit against the subsidiaries of the 3 companies as the aforementioned companies were found to be "sufficiently separate from their music units". Now, the defendants remaining are Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Capitol Records Inc., EMI Group North America Inc.,  Capitol-EMI Music Inc., Virgin Records America Inc., UMG Recordings Inc., and Warner Music Group Corp.

3. Craze Productions et al. v. Google Inc. et al. - BC465409

• Craze Productions (based out of London, UK) sued Google Inc. and Youtube LLC last week in California. Craze Productions claimed that Google and Youtube were "violating a contract and shortchanging it out of millions of dollars' worth of ad revenue generated through thousands of music clips and movies uploaded to Youtube". {http://www.law360.com/california/articles/258593}

4. USA v. Hensley - 2:11-cf-00455

• On the 18th, C. Hensley, the inventor of Zicam, a cold and allergy relief product, pled guilty to charges that he marketed an herbal product, Vira 38, "as treatment for bird flu without US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval"--a misdemeanor. He was previously arrested in June "for his role in marketing" it. "At sentencing Hensley faces a maximum of one year in prison, according to the agreement. He also agreed to forfeit just over $85,000". {http://www.law360.com/california/articles/259109}

5. The Author's Guild et al. v. Google Inc. - 1:05-cv-08136

• Judge Denny Chin extended Google's deadline for a settlement for the company's planned Google Books project--a massive digital library. Google and a group of authors and publishers now have extra time to "discuss terms of a possible deal that would settle a lawsuit over Google's plans to create" Google Books. Honorable Judge Chin warned that if they did not reach a settlement soon (stressing the importance of a deadline), he would decide if offering free snippets of a book online should be considered fair use". This hearing (on the 19th) is only the "latest wrangling in a 6-year-old suit over Google's plans to create a digital library". {http://www.law360.com/ip/articles/258991}