A federal judge in California on Feb. 24 dismissed a lawsuit from Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI that accused rival Sam Altman's OpenAI of stealing its trade secrets. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco said that xAI could refile its case, but for now has failed to allege that OpenAI committed any misconduct. The lawsuit, filed in September, claimed that former xAI employees took source code related to its Grok chatbot and other confidential information with them when they left for new jobs at OpenAI. "Notably absent are allegations about the conduct of OpenAI itself," Lin said. "xAI does not allege any facts indicating that OpenAI induced xAI’s former employees to steal xAI’s trade secrets or that these former xAI employees used any stolen trade secrets once employed by OpenAI." Lin had signaled in a January opinion that she would likely rule for OpenAI. She gave xAI until March 17 to file an amended complaint. xAI has separately sued a former engineer, Xuechen Li, for allegedly taking trade secrets to the ChatGPT maker. Li was blocked in that case from sharing xAI's technology with OpenAI, though OpenAI has said that Li never worked for the company and that it never acquired or used any of xAI's secrets. Spokespeople and attorneys for xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Feb. 24 decision. "We welcome the court's decision," OpenAI said in a statement. "This baseless lawsuit was never anything more than yet another front in Mr. Musk's ongoing campaign of harassment." The lawsuit is part of a broader legal battle between Musk and Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which he co-founded and is also suing over its ?conversion to a for-profit company. Musk, the world's richest person, is seeking as much as $134.5 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft in that case. Jury selection is scheduled for April 27. OpenAI said in a court filing that the trade-secrets case was part of a "campaign to harass a competitor with unfounded legal claims" because Grok could not keep up with ChatGPT.

A U.S. judge permanently barred the Justice Department on Feb. 23 from releasing a prosecutor's report on the criminal case accusing President Donald Trump of unlawfully retaining classified documents following his first term in office. Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon found that releasing the report would be a "manifest injustice" to the Republican president and two former associates who were charged alongside him because it would detail substantial allegations of criminal wrongdoing in a case that never reached a jury. Cannon, who Trump appointed to the bench in 2020, dismissed all the charges in 2024. Trump was accused in the case pursued by Special Counsel Jack Smith of illegally storing documents related to U.S. national defense, including the American nuclear program, at his Mar-a-Lago social club and obstructing U.S. government efforts to retrieve the material. Cannon found that Smith had not been lawfully appointed by the Justice Department during Democratic former President Joe Biden's administration. Disclosure of Smith's report "would contravene basic notions of fairness and justice in the process, where no adjudication of guilt has been reached following initiation of criminal charges," Cannon wrote in the Feb. 23 ruling. The order means substantial information about one of the four criminal cases Trump faced in his years out of office may not be disclosed to the public. Trump attorney Kendra Wharton welcomed Cannon's order in a statement, adding that "any and all fruit of Smith's poisonous tree" should "never see the light of day." Trump and his two co-defendants, personal aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago manager Carlos de Oliveira, pleaded not guilty to all charges and argued that the case was a politically motivated abuse of the U.S. legal system. They urged Cannon to bar the release of the report, which details Smith's justification for seeking charges. The Justice Department under Trump supported those arguments, arguing the report was a confidential document. "Judge Cannon's ruling continues a troubling pattern of decisions that shield the president from public scrutiny and place secrecy above the public's right to know," said Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, a government accountability group that has sought disclosure of the report. The Justice Department under Biden dropped an attempt to revive the case against Trump after he won the 2024 election. Special counsels, who are appointed to lead certain politically sensitive investigations, are required to draft reports to the U.S. attorney general detailing their conclusions on whether to seek charges. Shortly before Trump returned to the presidency 13 months ago, the Justice Department released Smith's report detailing his other since-dismissed case against Trump, which accused Trump of plotting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. Cannon initially had barred disclosure of the documents case report to Congress, citing the ongoing case against Nauta and de Oliveira. The Justice Department dropped charges against Nauta and de Oliveira after Trump returned to office last year. In the ruling, Cannon also cited concerns about releasing confidential grand jury information and concluded that Smith's drafting of the report circumvented her order finding him unlawfully appointed.

A federal judge on Feb. 18 rejected Live Nation Entertainment's bid to dismiss a lawsuit by the federal government and many U.S. states accusing the company of illegally trying to dominate the live concert industry. The decision by U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian cleared the way for a possible antitrust trial in Manhattan federal court, with jury selection scheduled to begin on March 2. While dismissing some claims, Subramanian said "there is a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether Live Nation has used monopoly power to foreclose competition." Shares of the Beverly Hills, California-based company traded 1.9% lower in after-hours trading following the decision, recouping much of an earlier 7% decline. The May 2024 lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice, 39 states and Washington, D.C. accused Live Nation of monopolizing markets for ticketing, concert-booking, venues and promotions, harming fans as well as performers. Fans and politicians had long urged regulators to reexamine Live Nation's 2010 purchase of Ticketmaster. They intensified their demands after Ticketmaster subjected Taylor Swift fans to high prices and hours-long online queues for her 2022 "Eras" tour. Subramanian said the government plaintiffs can try to prove that Live Nation improperly tied use of its amphitheaters to concert promotion services, and illegally dominated the market for ticketing services to major concert venues. He also said states can try to seek damages for ticket-buying fans, saying it was "reasonably foreseeable" that fans might have been harmed and that Live Nation's antitrust-injury challenge "falls flat." Subramanian dismissed claims related to concert promotions, and concert-booking services at major venues. "With those claims gone, we see no possible basis for breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster," Dan Wall, Live Nation's executive vice president for corporate and regulatory affairs, said in a statement. "We look forward to addressing the remaining claims at trial." In seeking a dismissal, Live Nation denied exercising monopoly power and said there was no evidence its conduct harmed "consumer welfare," such as by raising prices or reducing quality. It also said states lacked legal authority to sue on behalf of fans. Live Nation has separately requested that Subramanian limit next month's trial to claims by the state plaintiffs, and address Justice Department claims separately. The judge has yet to rule on that request.