Welcome back for another week of What's Next, where we report on the intersection of law and technology. Here's what we've got for you this week:

>> Nixon Peabody partners break down Facebook's $550 million biometrics settlement.

>> We take a trip to the future of psychedelic mushroom law with Allison Margolin of Los Angeles' Margolin & Lawrence.

>> Lex Machina's Legal Analytics are coming to state court.

Let's chat: Email me at [email protected] and follow me on Twitter at @a_lancaster.

Facebook's BIPA Settlement: Big Deal or Big Whoop?

Facebook reached a $550 million settlement with an estimated 7 million class members last week who allege the company's facial recognition tool, called tag suggestions, violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). Some experts have posited that the deal has changed the game for privacy legislation, and others say Facebook got away with a slap on the wrist.

Edelson, Labaton Sucharow and Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd negotiated the all-cash deal for Facebook. Labaton Sucharow's Michael Canty, who served as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York and the office's National Security and Cybercrimes Section prior to joining the firm, said the settlement ends a long, hard-fought battle that sends a signal to Silicon Valley.

"I think going forward it sends a clear message that, while you're going to advance the technology, you need to make sure consumers are fully informed, and in this case, opt in if they want to avail themselves of the technology," Canty said.

BIPA experts and Chicago Nixon Peabody partners Rich Tilghman and John Ruskusky said the settlement doesn't exactly measure up to other cases that have come under the law.

The regulatory pressure on Facebook and the fact that it marketed and potentially profited from the biometric tool makes the company unlike most typical BIPA defendants, Ruskusky said. "It made itself, in some ways, a target."

And while an all-cash settlement might be unique in privacy cases (think: Equifax's credit monitoring settlement over its data breach), BIPA's language provides for straight monetary and injunctive relief.

Ruskusky said the $550 million settlement is actually lower than it could've been. BIPA prescribes $1,000 relief per negligent violation and $5,000 per an intentional one, so Facebook could have been staring down billions of dollars in statutory damages based on the sheer number of class members, he said.

"One could argue this is going to result in some precedent for defendants to argue for lower settlement values in other BIPA cases going forward, of which there are close to 500 pending in Illinois," Tilghman said.

Ruskusky and Tilghman both said the widespread news coverage of the settlement could prompt other legislatures to enact their own biometrics legislation

"It will be interesting to see given Facebook's notoriety and the reports of the settlement if additional state action occurs at the state level, or possibly even the federal level," Tilghman said.

Are Magic Mushrooms the New Weed?

Santa Cruz, California, last Thursday became the third U.S. city to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms or their active ingredient psybicilin, following Oakland and Denver. While activists in Washington, D.C, work to decriminalize the substances, advocates in Oakland are pursuing legalization.

Margolin & Lawrence's Allison Margolin in Los Angeles, a cannabis lawyer who dubbed herself LA's dopest attorney, said the psychedelics business could become a new legal practice area.

In fact, Magolin's trying to figure out how to get her firm involved in the ordinance writing. "I think we could write to some people who are involved in it and see if they're interested in our help," she said.

Although cannabis might be a bit different in terms of the breadth of consumers, she said lawyers can take the lessons of the cannabis industry to start off the psychedelic mushroom growing industry on better footing.

One way to avoid the "catastrophic growing pains" that came with marijuana legalization could be sidestepping the millions spent on not being able to quickly and legally get permits for electricity and sprinkler systems and comply with other city codes, she said.

The attorney and author of "Just Dope," said psychedelic law experts could also learn from the social equity programs that helped drive the cannabis industry.

"I think they will have to expand it beyond people arrested for this particular crime," she said.

With cannabis, for instance, LA's social equity laws give people who were arrested for marijuana and people who lived in communities disproportionately affected by drug criminalization first crack at ownership and employment opportunities in the cannabis industry.

"I think they should expand it to anyone who has been arrested for the war on drugs, not just psychedelics."

However, what might be a more lucrative side of shrooms for the legal industry is advocacy and lobbyist work, she said. "There's going to be a lot to be done with petitioning," she said.

Lex Machina's state courts Legal Analytics platform allows users to browse case data by judges, lawyers, law firms and parties.

Big Data Comes to State Courts

Lex Machina is working to mine the millions of cases filed in state courts across the country, starting with Los Angeles and Houston.

The Menlo Park, California-based research company is taking its Legal Analytics platform to Los Angeles Superior Court and Texas' Harris County District Court and Harris County Court in Houston.

Carla Rydholm, director of product management for Lex Machina, said a mix of practicality and customer demand drove its choice to lead off its state court incursion with those two metros.

"Los Angeles civil trial court is the largest in the United States in terms of total cases filed," she said. "To us, that was really attractive to take on as a meaningful data set to bring legal analytics to. We also have a strong client base in Los Angeles and got feedback that that's one of the must-have courts."

The Houston courts, on the other hand, help diversify the dataset, she said.

"With our patent background and all the patent litigation going on in Texas, we have a strong customer base, and we know of use cases for Houston County courts as well," she said.

Rydholm said Lex Machina doesn't plan to stop at Texas and California. It will expand into New York state courts later this year.

"We plan to go big in terms of volume in state courts—and then beyond the United States," she said. "That's where we're headed.

On the Radar

Feds Lose Fitness Tracking Trade Secret Trial A San Jose, California, jury found a former Jawbone employee not guilty of charges she took trade secrets to her new gig at Fitbit. Katherine Mogal, the former director of market and customer experience insights at Jawbone, was one of six alums of the wearable tech company indicted in 2016 on federal trade secret charges. When asked if the federal prosecutors would continue to pursue cases against the remaining defendants, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California said, "As always, each case will proceed on its own merits." Read more from Ross Todd here.

Ridesharing's Spending Spree Uber and Lyft spent the last three months of 2019 sugaring up California lawmakers with more than $1 million in lobbying funds, according to disclosures filed with the Secretary of State's Office. Uber forked over $701,325, which was its most expensive quarter since registering as a lobbyist employer seven years ago. The funds were primarily directed at laws aimed at the two companies' bike and scooter businesses, and not AB 5. Read more from Cheryl Miller here.

A Billion-Dollar Verdict Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan won a pretty penny for The California Institute of Technology in a patent infringement dispute against Apple and Broadcom over Wi-Fi chip technology. A Los Angeles jury handed out a $1.1 billion award—$838 million against Apple and $270 million against Broadcom—after finding the companies incorporated infringing technology into more than 1 billion devices, at Apple's behest. Apple's attempt to distance itself from Broadcom by arguing it was "merely an indirect downstream party whose products incorporate the accused chips" did not hold up in court. Read more from Scott Graham here.

China Marshals Its Surveillance State in Fight Against Coronavirus "Using the country's pervasive digital-surveillance apparatus, authorities were able to track—down to the minute—the sick person's exact journey through the city's subway system. Officials then published those and other details of the person's movements on social media and warned residents to get themselves checked if they had been in the vicinity at the time." Read more from the Wall Street Journal.

Thanks for reading. We will be back next week with more What's Next.