Cross-Border Disputes and Deals—Handled with Precision

SpaceX sued the Air Force for awarding asole-source, $11B launch contract to ULA without competitive bidding. The lawsuithelped end ULA’s exclusive hold on national security launches and opened themarket to commercial competitors.

San Francisco tried to hold Airbnb liable forproviding booking services for unregistered short-term rentals. Airbnbchallenged the law under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and thecity revised the ordinance during the litigation. The case became an early testof how far platform immunity extends in the sharing economy.

UC Berkeley (Doudna) and the Broad Institute(Zhang) fought over who owned the foundational patents for CRISPR gene-editingin human cells. The USPTO ruled in Broad’s favor, splitting the patentlandscape and shaping who controls and profits from the most consequentialbiotech tool of the century, although a 2025 appellate ruling sent theconception issue back for reconsideration while leaving other parts of thedecision intact.

The SEC sued Ripple, claiming XRP was anunregistered security. A 2023 ruling held that programmatic sales of XRP onexchanges were not securities offerings, delivering the first major judicialpushback against the SEC’s “regulation by enforcement” approach to crypto.

The SEC sued the largest U.S. crypto exchange,alleging it operated as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, andclearing agency. The case became a proxy war over whether existing securitieslaw can govern digital assets or whether Congress needs to write new rulesentirely.

Users challenged the Treasury Department’ssanctioning of Tornado Cash, an open-source crypto mixing protocol. The FifthCircuit ruled that immutable smart contracts are not “property” OFAC cansanction, setting a foundational precedent for whether governments can sanctionautonomous code under existing sanctions law.

Environmental groups sued the FAA over itsapproval of SpaceX’s Starship launches from Boca Chica, Texas, citingecological harm. The case tested whether environmental review frameworks cankeep pace with rapid-iteration private aerospace programs, but the courtultimately upheld the FAA’s approval.

The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, allegingthat training GPT models on its articles constitutes copyright infringement.The highest-profile test of whether large-scale AI training on copyrightedcontent qualifies as fair use, with existential implications for the generativeAI industry.

NYC enacted Local Law 18, requiring short-termrental hosts to register with the city and be present during stays, effectivelybanning most Airbnb-style listings. Airbnb’s legal challenge failed, and thelaw took effect, becoming a model for cities seeking to restrict short-termrentals.

Universal Music and other music publishers suedAnthropic, alleging that Claude was trained on copyrighted song lyrics and canreproduce them. A key test of copyright liability for AI model training andoutput, distinct from the NYT case in that it targets lyric reproduction ratherthan news content.

Following the $40B collapse of the Terra/Lunaecosystem, the SEC sued Terraform Labs and Do Kwon for securities fraud. A juryfound Terraform liable, resulting in a $4.5B settlement, one of the largestenforcement outcomes in crypto history and a warning to algorithmic stablecoinprojects.

Authors sued Google for scanning millions ofbooks without permission to build Google Books. After a decade of litigation,courts ruled the project was fair use, legitimizing large-scale digitizationand setting the conceptual groundwork for the AI training data debates thatfollowed.

Waymo (Google’s self-driving unit) accused Uberof stealing lidar trade secrets via a former engineer. The case settledmid-trial with Uber paying ~$245M in equity and agreeing not to use thedisputed technology, a defining moment for trade secret enforcement in theautonomous vehicle race.

Oracle sued Google for copying Java APIdeclarations into Android. After over a decade, the Supreme Court ruled 6-2that Google’s use was fair use, preserving interoperability in softwaredevelopment and clarifying the copyright treatment of functional codeinterfaces.

California’s AB5 law threatened to reclassifygig workers as employees. Uber and other platforms spent over $200M backingProposition 22, a ballot measure carving out an exemption. Courts upheld Prop22, preserving independent-contractor status for app-based drivers whilecreating a hybrid labor model that continues to shape gig economy law.