Big win for Qualcomm this week, with a 9th Circuit panel reversing an antitrust verdict against the company that “had threatened the chip maker’s business model.” The appellate court, in flipping the district court’s ruling, found that “Qualcomm had no duty under antitrust law to license its competitors” – NYTimes and WSJ and Law360
The pandemic is pushing large national restaurant and retail chains to abandon their Manhattan outposts, with the math of the past 5 months dictating that “the expense of being in [NYC] has overtaken the marketing group that says you have to be there” – NYTimes
It’s also bumped ex-Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes’ criminal trial from October 2020 to March 2021 – Law360
New WSJ reporting accuses TikTok of collecting unique identifiers from “millions of mobile devices, data that allows the app to track users online without allowing them to opt out,” by violating Google policies “limiting how apps track people” without disclosing it to TikTok users – WSJ
The country’s first in-person patent jury trial since Covid has resulted in a rough day for Apple, which the Texas federal jury found owes PanOptis and related companies more than $506 million for “willfully infringing patents covering 4G LTE technology” – Law360
Checking in with Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon, who—ill-fated Hamptons DJDSol gig aside—has responded to the virus with somewhat uncharacteristic flexibility with broad work-at-home policies that have helped his “traders capitalize on surging marketing activity in the first and second quarters” while appealing to the growing under-30 crowd at his firm – NYTimes
Tesla, following Apple’s lead, announced a 5-for-1 stock split this week on the heels of a “share-price surge over recent months vaulted the electric-vehicle maker to the status of the most valuable car company” – WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
Meanwhile, over at GM, CFO Dhivya Suryadevara—one of the automaker’s “fastest-rising stars”—has unexpectedly decamped to join fintech firm Stripe – WSJ
Federal authorities and Moderna have reached a deal that would see the pharma company “manufacture and distribute 100 million doses of its experimental vaccine for Covid-19,” an agreement valued upwards of $1.5 billion – Bloomberg and MarketWatch
Former Pinterest COO Francoise Brougher, who “abruptly left the company with little explanation” in April, has sued her former employer for alleged sexist treatment. Brougher’s complaint cites a laundry list of sexist treatment, including being “left out of important meetings, . . . given gendered feedback, . . . paid less than her male peers when she joined the company, and ultimately . . . let go for speaking up about it” – NYTimes
Clearview AI, the facial recognition company infamous for scraping “billions of photos from the internet,” has brought on prominent First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams to defend itself against a spate of claims (many of which have been consolidated in SDNY) that it’s violating state privacy laws – NYTimes
Airbnb is close to filing IPO paperwork with the SEC that would lay the groundwork for going public in a “surprising rebound for the home-sharing giant and the IPO market” – WSJ
I mean, a trip to Bend is always a good idea, but there’s added incentive for you 90s nostalgia babies out there, with the lone remaining Blockbuster stores in the country now offering via Airbnb an epic slumber party experience – ThePost and Mashable
Stay safe.
