In an opinion filed on Thursday, Judge McMahon granted summary judgment to plaintiffs on their claims that the Government’s April 2025 mass termination of more than 1,400 National Endowment for the Humanities (“NEH”) grants was unconstitutional and ultra vires (see our prior coverage here). The court described a glaring departure from NEH’s established grant‑review
Steptoe & Johnson LLP Blogs
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Reddit Sues Perplexity AI and Data Scrapers for “Industrial-Scale” Theft of “Valuable Copyrighted Content”
On Wednesday, Reddit Inc. sued Perplexity AI and three “data scrapers,” alleging the companies are circumventing its technological safeguards to unlawfully acquire Reddit’s copyrighted data to “feed” Perplexity’s artificial intelligence model.
Reddit is one of the largest online discussion platforms in the world and “comprises nearly two decades of human conversational data organized across interest-based,…
Magistrate Judge Wang: State Law Prohibiting Employers’ Access to Employees’ Social Media Does Not Circumvent Federal Discovery
In a follow-up to Magistrate Judge Wang’s discovery order last week, in which the court denied defendants Microsoft and OpenAI’s motion to compel discovery for lack of relevance, on Monday Magistrate Judge Wang granted plaintiff New York Times’ motion to compel discovery, in part, to require the production of direct messages from defendants’ employees on…
Magistrate Judge Wang: New York Times’ AI Use Not Relevant to Microsoft’s Fair Use Defense
On Friday, Magistrate Judge Wang denied a motion to compel discovery brought by defendants Microsoft Corporation and OpenAI in an action relating to defendants’ use of plaintiff New York Times’ copyrighted works to train defendants’ large-language models.
Defendants sought to compel the production of plaintiff’s use of, and statements about, AI tools, asserting the evidence…
The UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act: What Does It Mean for Business?
The UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA) received Royal Assent on May 24, 2024, after a series of amendments ping-ponged back and forth between the House of Commons and The House of Lords. It is a major piece of legislation for businesses and consumers and reflects the most significant changes to the powers of…
BIS Removes Significant Export Control License Requirements for Australia and the UK under the Strategic AUKUS Partnership
On May 8, 2024, BIS published a correction to the interim final rule, further removing license requirements for certain items under ECCN 0x5zz.
Previously, the interim final rule stated that all 0x5zz ECCNs referenced in footnote 9 to the Commerce Country Chart in supplement no. 1 to part 738 that were previously controlled for NS1…
President Signs Expansive Sanctions Bill Into Law; Doubling of Limitations Period for IEEPA Violations Likely to Have Major Impact
On April 24, 2024, President Biden signed HR 815, “Making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes,” into law (the “National Security Supplemental” or the “NSS”). The National Security Supplemental appropriates funds to provide security assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and US partners in the Indo-Pacific and…
Biden Administration to Implement New National Security Rules Targeting Personal Data
On February 28, 2024, the Biden administration announced the creation of a new national security regulatory regime that will prohibit or restrict certain transactions involving bulk sensitive US personal data or government-related data and specified “countries of concern.” The Biden administration announced the regime in a new executive order, Preventing Access to Americans’ Bulk…
Disruptive Technology Strike Force: Year in Review
On February 16, 2023, almost one year after the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and among increasing scrutiny of broader geopolitical threats to US supply chains, the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) and the Department of Justice’s National Security Division (NSD) announced the creation of the “Disruptive Technology…
Copyright Infringement Lawsuits Against OpenAI and Microsoft Are Mounting
In two complaints filed last week, The Intercept Media, Inc, Raw Story Media, Inc. and AlterNet Media, Inc. became the latest companies to sue OpenAI for copyright infringement in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Intercept also included Microsoft as a defendant.
Both complaints were filed by self-identified “news organizations,” and allege that…