Judge orders Meta to pay over $900 million for failing to protect kids on social media; Business Insider, August 6, 2026

  

Kelsey Vlamis, Sydney Bradley,  Huileng Tan; Business Insider ; Judge orders Meta to pay over $900 million for failing to protect kids on social media

"Meta must pay a total of $942 million to address harm caused to children on its platforms, a New Mexico judge ruled Thursday.

A jury in March found Meta liable for failing to protect kids and approved a $375 million fine. New Mexico state Judge Bryan Biedscheid issued a ruling Thursday ordering the company to pay an additional $567 million and to make changes to its platforms to make them safer for kids. The judge said the money was to be put into an abatement fund, with most of it, $420 million, to go toward treatment services.

Among the changes, Meta must strengthen age verification in New Mexico, limit users under 18 in the state to a combined 90 hours a month on Facebook and Instagram, turn off most push notifications for minors overnight and during school hours, and hide "like" counts by default unless a parent or guardian allows them to be shown."

Annie Leibovitz Launches Copyright Lawsuit Over Her Image of Justin and Hailey Bieber; PetaPixel, July 20, 2026

 Pesala Bandara, PetaPixel; Annie Leibovitz Launches Copyright Lawsuit Over Her Image of Justin and Hailey Bieber

"The latest decision highlights a key issue in copyright law: the distinction between owning a copyright and holding specific exclusive rights that allow a licensee to enforce those rights in court."

Anthropic,Bartz v. Anthropic,authors,copyright infringement settlement,copyright law,AI training data,pirated works,damages,publishers,

 Constance Grady, Vox ; Anthropic owes authors $1.5B for pirating work — but the claims process is a Kafkaesque mess

$100 Million Award Made in Suit Over Unlicensed Robert Indiana Art; The New York Times, April 24, 2026

 Graham Bowley, The New York Times; $100 Million Award Made in Suit Over Unlicensed Robert Indiana Art

"An art publisher accused in a civil suit of isolating Robert Indiana, the artist, in the final years of his life, has been found to have created unauthorized or adulterated versions of Indiana’s work by a New York jury.

The jury in federal court in Manhattan found in favor of Indiana’s former business partner, the Morgan Art Foundation, a for-profit company, that sued the publisher, Michael McKenzie, on the grounds that he had interfered with its rights by making Indiana works that he did not have the authority to produce.

Among the works cited in the suit were some based on the most famous of Indiana’s works, a depiction of the word “love” in capital letters, with the L and a jauntily tilted O perched atop the V and E. The image is recreated in sculptures that sit in plazas in several cities and on coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets worldwide.

The jury awarded Morgan $102.2 million in damages."

Waterbury's Post University awarded $75.3M in copyright infringement lawsuit; CT Insider, March 11, 2026

 Richard Chumney , CT Insider; Waterbury's Post University awarded $75.3M in copyright infringement lawsuit

"A federal jury composed of Connecticut residents has ordered the education software company Learneo to pay Post University more than $75.3 million in damages for distributing school-owned documents on its Course Hero platform. 

The Hartford jury found the San Francisco-based company violated U.S. copyright law by hosting the documents without permission and altered the files to conceal the infringement, according to court records."

Court seems dubious of billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement; SCOTUSblog, December 2, 2025

Ronald Mann, SCOTUSblog; Court seems dubious of billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement

 "My basic reaction to the argument is that the justices would be uncomfortable with accepting the broadest version of the arguments that Cox has presented to it (that the ISP is protected absent an affirmative act of malfeasance), but Sony’s position seems so unpalatable to them that a majority is most unlikely to coalesce around anything that is not a firm rejection of the lower court’s ruling against Cox. I wouldn’t expect that ruling to come soon, but I don’t think there is much doubt about what it will say."

Court to consider billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement; SCOTUSblog, November 25, 2025

 Ronald Mann , SCOTUSblog; Court to consider billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement

"The court will hear its big copyright case for the year during the first week of the December session, when on Monday, Dec. 1, it reviews a billion-dollar ruling against Cox Communications based on its failure to eradicate copyright infringement by its customers."

OpenAI Risks Billions as Court Weighs Privilege in Copyright Row; Bloomberg Law, October 10, 2025

 

Annelise Levy

, Bloomberg Law; OpenAI Risks Billions as Court Weighs Privilege in Copyright Row

"Authors and publishers suing the artificial intelligence giant have secured access to some Slack messages and emails discussing OpenAI’s deletion of a dataset containing pirated books and are seeking additional attorney communications about the decision. If they succeed, the communications could demonstrate willful infringement, triggering enhanced damages of as much as $150,000 per work...

The US District Court for the Southern District of New York last week ordered OpenAI to turn over most employee communications about the data deletion that the AI company argued were protected by attorney-client privilege. OpenAI may appeal the decision. A separate bid for OpenAI’s correspondence with in-house and outside attorneys remains pending."

Anthropic’s surprise settlement adds new wrinkle in AI copyright war; Reuters, August 27, 2025

Blake Brittain, Reuters; Anthropic’s surprise settlement adds new wrinkle in AI copyright war

"Anthropic's class action settlement with a group of U.S. authors this week was a first, but legal experts said the case's distinct qualities complicate the deal's potential influence on a wave of ongoing copyright lawsuits against other artificial-intelligence focused companies like OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms.

Amazon-backed Anthropic was under particular pressure, with a trial looming in December after a judge found it liable for pirating millions of copyrighted books. The terms of the settlement, which require a judge's approval, are not yet public. And U.S. courts have just begun to wrestle with novel copyright questions related to generative AI, which could prompt other defendants to hold out for favorable rulings."