Everyone knows that fuel prices tend to go up in the summer. But are consumers in warmer states also getting less gas than they're (over)paying for? That's what a class of gas purchasers alleged in five-year-old consolidated litigation over "hot fuel" that settled on Friday.

Director Francis Ford Coppola's wine company claims that faulty bottles and caps it bought from Vinocor USA turned 55,000 cases of international wines from its "Encyclopedia" collection into a useless collection of vinegar.

All good things must come to an end, and from what we gather the global patent war between Research in Motion and Visto has been a very good thing to the lawyers involved. On Thursday, both companies announced that they had agreed to settle all litigation over RIM's Blackberry patents, with RIM paying Visto $267.5 million. In exchange RIM gets access to all Visto patents and acquires some of its intellectual property.

Electronic Arts and its lawyers at Davis Wright Tremaine and Keker & Van Nest got mixed tidings Wednesday in a pair of decisions from the Ninth Circuit. But the news was mostly bad for the video game maker, and nothing but good for plaintiffs lawyer Steve Berman.