CINCINNATI — The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed a lower court and found that two pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) accused by Ohio of conspiring to drive up prices of prescription drugs properly removed the case to federal court under the federal officer removal statute.

JACKSON, Miss. — A plaintiff architectural design entity can pursue claims that a property sales company infringed the design of a single element of a copyrighted home design, a federal judge in Mississippi held, but it could not pursue claims based on technical drawings the judge found were not part of the registration of the architectural work.

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A New York federal judge granted an insurer’s motion for intervention in another insurer’s suit seeking to rescind insurance policies issued to a company for its alleged failure to disclose an indictment for insurance fraud, finding that the insurer seeking intervention satisfied the requirements pursuant to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A business analytics company’s failure to adequately identify and define its alleged trade secrets in a dispute with another analytics company and its co-founders justified a Utah federal judge’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant entities, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held Jan. 28.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on Jan. 28 denied an application for recall and stay of mandate filed by a national debt collection firm after the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled for the first time that when two former employees shared a spreadsheet containing passwords and login information they committed “workplace-policy infractions” and not violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and that the passwords themselves were not trade secrets under federal or state law.

CINCINNATI — The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower federal court’s grant of an insurer’s motion to dismiss a women’s fashion retailer’s breach of contract and declaratory judgment lawsuit seeking business interruption coverage for its losses arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, holding that the lower court did not err when it refused to evaluate the policy at issue under the law of each of the 22 states where the insured claimed losses.

NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled that it lacks subject matter jurisdiction over an appeal brought by domestic insurers against a Louisiana political subdivision that brought claims for hurricane insurance coverage, citing a Louisiana Supreme Court ruling arising out of certified questions from the same case and recent Fifth Circuit precedents holding that state law prohibits arbitration of such disputes.

LAFAYETTE, La. — The government on Jan. 27 asked a Louisiana federal court to stay all proceedings in a case brought by the state that challenges the validity of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2023 decision to remove the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, one of two drugs used to induce early termination of pregnancy, while it conducts a review of the agency’s previous rulings.