Our founding fathers may not have guaranteed the right to free speech in the first draft of the U.S. Constitution, but it did make it into the very first amendment to the document. A series of Supreme Court rulings during the Civil Rights movement extended the right to free speech,…
Recently, the Illinois Appellate Court for the First District issued a significant decision on the question of which statute of limitations govern claims for violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”). In its opinion, the Court ruled that claims for unlawful profiting from or disclosure of biometric data,…
In a putative class-action lawsuit filed against Apple concerning alleged violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), the parties disputed the scope of discovery to which the plaintiffs were entitled. The plaintiffs sought to compel Apple to produce certain identifying information for Illinois residents with Apple devices containing…
A federal appeals court has revived a portion of Representative Devin Nunes’s defamation lawsuit that was dismissed last year finding that the defendant’s tweeting a link to the allegedly defamatory article after the lawsuit was filed could satisfy the actual malice requirement. In September 2018, Esquire magazine published an article…
At the request of Congress, the Copyright Office recently agreed to undertake a public study to evaluate the effectiveness of current copyright protections for publishers in the United States, with a particular focus on press publishers. The Copyright Office issued a Notice of Inquiry seeking public comment on a variety…
In a recent decision, the Seventh Circuit clarified the proper standard for deciding a motion for summary judgment. Many litigants and lawyers alike believe that the existence of a factual dispute is sufficient to stave off summary judgment and proceed to trial. However, the Seventh Circuit took the opportunity to…
A federal District Court recently dismissed the defamation claims filed by embattled attorney Michael Avenatti against Fox News and several of its anchors. In its decision, the District Court found that Avenatti’s claims failed to overcome the high hurdle to sustaining defamation claims against a media defendant. In the Court’s…
In a class-action filed against Champion Petfoods alleging that the pet food company misrepresented the quality of its dog food and ingredients, the Seventh Circuit recently affirmed a grant of summary judgment in favor of Champion. In doing so, the Court reiterated to future litigants that “summary judgment is the…
The federal government has increased its efforts to curtail the abuse of restrictive covenants such as non-compete agreements, non-solicitation agreements, and no-poaching agreements. In July of this year, President Biden signed the Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, which encourages the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to make…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently affirmed the imposition of a preliminary injunction obtained by Illinois-based medical device maker, Life Spine Inc., against a former business partner who allegedly misappropriated Life Spine’s trade secrets and gave them to its parent company, a competitor of Life Spine.…