A week after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced in a blog post that Microsoft will take a seat on the OpenAI board as a nonvoting observer, the Authors Guild and the 17 plaintiff authors who brought suit against numerous OpenAI entities and Microsoft filed an amended copyright infringement complaint Tuesday (docket 1:23-cv-08292) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. Microsoft is a 49% shareholder in OpenAI.

The First Amendment guarantees virtually insurmountable protection for a private entity’s expressive decision to share, or not to share, another speaker’s lawful expression with their own audience, said an amicus brief Tuesday at the U.S. Supreme Court from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Motion Picture Association and six other groups in support of NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association and their efforts to defeat the Texas and Florida social media laws.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and the Daily Wire and Federalist media outlets seek declaratory and injunctive relief to stop the State Department from running “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press” in the history of the U.S., said their complaint Wednesday (docket 6:23-cv-00609) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas in Tyler. The complaint draws heavily from documents produced in discovery in Missouri v. Biden.

Amazon and its companies, plus John Doe defendants 1-100, violate California codes by contractually denying customers’ right to free speech, alleged a class action Friday (docket 23ST-cv-29540) in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The suit represents California consumers who have visited, used or completed transactions through Amazon’s various e-commerce sites.

Verizon seeks a preliminary injunction, pending trial on the merits of its claims in the case, ordering the city of Milwaukee “to issue permits and all necessary permissions” for the installation of small-cell wireless communications facilities in the city’s Deer District (see 2311270034), said its motion Monday (docket 2:23-cv-01581) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

Orrick Herrington, the global law firm that has defended data breach clients, failed to implement cybersecurity measures of its own in a 2023 breach, said a class action Monday (docket 3:23-cv-06264) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.

Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Lumen is suing an investor and board member who allegedly pocketed the entire distribution authorized by the board in a 2019 consent, after the investor and his wife received $3.4 million -- vs. the $266,200 they should have received -- due to a clerical error, said a complaint (docket 1:23-cv-16484) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago.

Defendant Zachary Lotz, who also goes by the aliases Lao Ganma and Sam Hill, “has repeatedly harassed, and continues to harass, Shopify merchants and Shopify itself through knowingly false allegations of copyright infringement,” alleged Shopify’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint Monday (docket 1:23-cv-01254) in U.S. District Court for Western New York in Buffalo.

Google’s administrative motion Friday to align briefing schedules in two tax filing website cases should be denied because it’s relying on a motion to compel arbitration in one “as an excuse to delay proceedings” in another, said plaintiff Mary Smith’s opposition Monday (docket 5:23-cv-03527) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose.