Isaiah Poritz

California Courts Correspondent @BLaw | Tips: [email protected]

Follow me on bluesky: @poritz.bsky.social

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

NEW: Elon Musk defrauded Twitter investors in 2022 when he tweeted his $44 billion deal to buy the company was "on hold," an SF jury found today.

The investors believe they'll reap around $2.6 billion in damages from Musk. https://t.co/Z617L0Bwva

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

An SF jury this morning founder an ex-Google engineer guilty of stealing AI trade secrets to start a company in China.

He went so far as to have an intern swipe his badge at the office while holding his second job in China. https://t.co/JLneOGNLt6

[Jacob Shamsian ⚖️ @JayShams]

Lovely interview with the great William Alsup ahead of his retirement from the federal bench

https://t.co/tWqVyQdWmA

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

Judge William Alsup, an institution on the Northern California federal district court, is planning to retire Dec. 31 after a quarter century on the bench.

Here's my profile looking at his passion for landscape photography and his life in the law: https://t.co/6yOoDwX7Xt

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

Yosemite is a dreamland in the eyes of a BASE jumper, a parachutist who launches from tall cliffs.

But an obscure, decades-old law prohibits BASE jumping in our national parks.

Enter: a new lawsuit from jumpers involving wonky administrative law.
https://t.co/AIY0Pp5oLu

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

This Part 1 of my series on Yosemite and the law. I'll have a story out tomorrow morning examining the legal battle to allow BASE jumping, the extreme sport invented in Yosemite, in our national parks.

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

When I first started on the California courts beat, I was surprised to learn that a federal judge holds court in maybe my favorite place in the world.

I drove out to Yosemite this summer to profile Judge Helena Barch-Kuchta. https://t.co/xCLgvCWaW8

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

Google violated the privacy of almost 100 million users and must pay $425 million in damages, a San Francisco federal jury found this afternoon.

At issue is a nature of a privacy "on/off" toggle buried in your account settings.
https://t.co/h330PcGcQ4

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

BREAKING: Meta secretly recorded the sensitive menstrual health data of millions of women who used the popular period tracking app Flo, a San Francisco federal jury just determine.
https://t.co/eT5fPTkdOu

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

I imagine it's not easy to impress a US Supreme Court Justice, but Anthropic's Claude AI model seems to have done just that.

Justice Elena Kagan said at a conference that Claude did "an exceptional job" analyzing a complicated constitutional question. https://t.co/cXOOvvWuvY

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

NEW: Meta just escaped a copyright suit from authors who say the company took their books without permission to train its AI model

This comes just two days after Anthropic beat a similar suit from authors.

But the rulings are very different... https://t.co/zkwIdL3JS7

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

US District Judge William Alsup, who has presided over Silicon Valley's biggest legal battles since he was appointed in 1999, said today that he will likely assume inactive status by the end of the year: https://t.co/A0HMKrVT7d

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

Judge William Alsup in San Francisco this afternoon blocked Trump's firing of some federal probationary workers.

Includes workers at NPS, NSF, BLM and the VA, but not all federal agencies.
https://t.co/BD3iBn0acC

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

Judge William Alsup will hold an unusual hearing in his SF court Thursday: He wants an educational crash course on the science behind generative AI.

The 79-year-old judge has a penchant for using tutorials to understand technical Silicon Valley cases. https://t.co/mWxcMgGigT

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

It took just over 5 years, but WhatsApp is now victorious in its lawsuit against Israeli intelligence firm NSO Group, maker of the notorious Pegasus spying software used by governments around the world.

https://t.co/oBbgVuU47f

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

A ByteDance whistleblower who exposed CCP influence was sanctioned today by a federal court for lying in his deposition and fabricating a key witness.

Yintao "Roger" Yu engaged in "obstructive and mendacious" conduct in his wrongful firing suit.
https://t.co/jKkEAS1ODP

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

The 9th Circuit stops at nothing to administer justice lol

The San Francisco tsunami alert came in the middle of oral arguments downtown this morning.

Judge Bress: "Welcome to San Francisco."

"That's a first for us with the tsunami warning, but why don't we go ahead."

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

The ruling today in California federal court contrasts an opinion from an state court judge who largely tossed out the school districts' case in June: https://t.co/h61Wwd3bP4

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

Another big ruling this afternoon in the social media addiction case:

School districts can largely proceed with their suit claiming platforms caused a youth mental health crisis that largely burdens schools. https://t.co/yXGy8Xgxta

[Isaiah Poritz @IsaiahPoritz]

Some interesting details in Sarah Silverman's AI copyright lawsuit against Meta.

Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to a Dec. 17 deposition in Hawaii (where he has his vacation compound), if the court approves. AI Chief Yann LeCun will be deposed Nov. 21.
https://t.co/p1jtRxo7Ox