The US vs Apple case will take years to conclude. Apple's success is built upon integration - its hardware, software, services, and entire ecosystem of products work together to create an experience. Developers who want to enter the iOS ecosystem have to go through the App Store and abide by its rules and restrictions. This article looks at the facts of the case against Apple, which directly attacks Apple's core differentiation: its deep integrations across its devices.

Elon Musk, co-founder of OpenAI, is suing the company claiming - among other things - that GPT-4 constitutes AGI and is no longer subject to the Microsoft agreement. He also argues for more transparency and openness.

OpenAI responded to Elon Musk's lawsuit by sharing its side of the story along with screenshots of email exchanges between Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, and Elon Musk. The receipts show that Musk believed OpenAI’s chance of success was 0% and agreed that there was a need to close source certain models.

Poland's consumer and competition watchdog has fined Amazon nearly $8 million for deceptive practices that included misleading consumers about contract conclusions and employing 'dark design patterns' to create urgency in purchases. The e-commerce giant, accused of not honoring stated delivery dates and availability, plans to appeal the sanction.

Do Kwon's extradition to the U.S. over Terra's collapse is uncertain after a Montenegro court ordered a retrial.

A US district judge has rejected the requests of crypto exchange Gemini and crypto lender Genesis to dismiss a case initiated by the SEC concerning the Gemini Earn program. Judge Edgardo Ramos found that the SEC "plausibly alleged" that both parties offered and sold unregistered securities. Genesis and Gemini were first charged by the SEC in January 2023.

Uniswap Labs is being sued by the SEC. The Uniswap Protocol is a credibly neutral infrastructure. It acts like an electric grid that can be built upon by other companies and applications to utilize the benefits of trustless liquidity. The company has no control over what is listed or who builds on the protocol — it is merely a software publisher operating a front end.

DeFi is being tested in legal battles. Avi Eisenberg leveraged Mango Markets' code to extract $110 million, arguing that because the code permitted it, he didn't commit a crime. At the same time, the SEC's case against Uniswap Labs could determine how decentralized DeFi can be and whether the vision of a fully autonomous, code-based financial system is realizable.

Apple terminated Epic Games' developer account, a move Epic claims violates the EU's Digital Markets Act.

The two founders of Samourai Wallet have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Samourai is being accused of facilitating more than $100 million in money laundering from illegal wallets and over $2 billion in unlawful transactions. The website has been seized and replaced with a government notice.

The Department of Justice says that Binance CEO CZ Zhao should spend three years in jail for money laundering charges. The sentence is harsher than the federal guideline of 18 months because of Zhao's willful violation of U.S. law. In November 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering and sanctions violations, forcing Binance to pay $4.3 billion in penalties and barring Zhao from involvement with Binance for at least three years. The sentencing is scheduled for April 30th.

Consensys is suing the SEC to restrain the SEC's attempts to expand its jurisdiction over crypto regulation and defend the Ethereum blockchain and its community of developers and users. Consensys argues that the SEC's current approach is creating unnecessary confusion and disruption for those invested in the future and development of Ethereum and related decentralized technologies.

A Dutch court convicted the Tornado Cash developer of laundering $1.2 billion of crypto, with a three-judge panel sentencing him to five years and four months in prison. Co-founder Roman Storm is facing similar charges in the United States, with a federal court trial scheduled for September.

OpenAI paused the "Sky" voice mode for ChatGPT-4o after backlash for allegedly mimicking Scarlett Johansson's voice from the 2013 film Her. The actress is also pursuing legal action against the AI firm.

A U.S. appeals court set a fast-track schedule to hear legal challenges to the potential ban of TikTok.

Elon Musk has dropped the lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman that claims they have deviated from their original mission in favor of profit. He has the option to file again in the future.

The US government is suing Adobe for allegedly hiding expensive fees and making it difficult to cancel a subscription. The complaint claims that Adobe failed to properly disclose an early termination fee that can amount to hundreds of dollars. Customers have to go through an onerous and complicated process when canceling their subscription that involves navigating through multiple webpages and pop-ups. They encounter similar obstacles when attempting to cancel their subscriptions over the phone or via live chats. A copy of the complaint against Adobe is available at the end of the article.

Celsius Network filed a lawsuit in New York against thousands of its users, especially those who withdrew their funds up to 90 days before the platform declared bankruptcy. The company is now looking to claw back the withdrawals at current market rates (far exceeding the amount at time of withdrawal).

Whistleblowers have accused OpenAI of placing illegal restrictions on employee communication with government regulators, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post, which urges the SEC to investigate OpenAI's severance, non-disparagement, and non-disclosure agreements for violating employees' rights to whistleblower incentives and compensation.

Amazon and the Better Business Bureau have filed a joint lawsuit against a site that is allegedly selling fraudulent positive reviews on Amazon product pages and Better Business Bureau profiles to “bad actors”.

Adobe faces an FTC lawsuit for allegedly misleading consumers about early termination fees (ETFs) for its Creative Cloud subscriptions, which the FTC claims were not disclosed. Internal documents revealed Adobe executives were aware of consumer confusion and dissatisfaction. Although Adobe's general counsel argued that the company had already started improving its subscription practices before the FTC's involvement, he acknowledged the complexity of displaying the ETF calculation on the order screen.

The CFTC has subpoenaed Hit Network, a crypto-focused media company that previously had Ben 'BitBoy' Armstrong as its public face. It has requested information about trading activity and wallets associated with 15 tokens featured in the company's media content, some that were in videos speculating about 100x returns. Armstrong, who was forcibly removed from the company after legal issues, "could not be more happy about" the subpoena.

A federal judge has ruled that Google illegally held a monopoly in search and text advertising. Google was found to have violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which outlaws monopolies. The ruling is the first anti-monopoly decision against a tech company in decades. Google plans to appeal the ruling.

Elon Musk has revived a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of fraudulently obtaining $44 million in seed funding by promising to keep OpenAI's technology open-source and prioritize the public good, only to later turn it into a for-profit venture with ties to Microsoft, which Musk claims betrays the original mission and has caused irreparable harm to both his interests and the public.

A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets. It's not yet clear what this ruling will mean for the future of Google's business, as this initial finding is only about the company's liability, not about remedies. Google's fate will be determined in the next phase of proceedings, which could result in anything from a mandate to stop certain business practices to a breakup of Google's search business.

A federal judge has ordered Ripple to pay a $125 million civil penalty in its lawsuit with the SEC. Zora has launched a major protocol upgrade, integrating with Uniswap to create on-chain secondary markets that allow creators to earn royalties from trades after a mint ends. Ethena Labs expanded its synthetic dollar protocol, Ethena, to Solana to improve the scalability and stability of USDe.

A US judge has blocked the Federal Trade Commission's ban on non-compete agreements, ruling that the FTC lacked the authority to issue such a wide-reaching rule.

Kalshi, a US-regulated prediction market platform, won its lawsuit against the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over launching markets on which party will control the Senate and House of Representatives after the November elections. Though Kalshi does not integrate blockchain, this is a win for prediction markets like Polymarket, which have been operating solely outside of the United States. The CFTC has filed an emergency motion to stop Kalshi from listing its markets.

The US Department of Justice's next monopoly trial against Google started on Monday. The trial challenges the tech giant's ad tech dominance. The DOJ is arguing that Google broke competition in the ad tech space by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers to facilitate digital advertising. Google profits from both advertisers and publishers, pocketing at least 30 cents of each advertising dollar flowing from advertisers to website publishers through its ad tech tools. The trial is expected to last four to six weeks and may be the most consequential of the monopoly trials Google has recently faced.

On September 16, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear oral arguments for TikTok's First Amendment challenge to legislation that it claims amounts to a ban. The US government argues that TikTok is a clear national security threat but says that revealing why would be a threat. Its claims rely on dozens of pages of redacted classified material that likely focus on the potential that the Chinese government could compel ByteDance to hand over the data of US users or push specific content onto US users. These risks are reportedly so significant that they override TikTok's First Amendment claims.