Things can't get a whole lot worse for Lime Wire. Can Willkie Farr succeed where Fulbright and Wilson Sonsini have not?

When executives from the world's biggest electronics manufacturers met for a round of golf in the late 1990s, they weren't just keeping track of their strokes, a lawyer for Best Buy told a San Francisco federal district court jury on Tuesday.

There's not a lot of juice left in the music streaming Web site after a summary judgment ruling that it induces copyright infringement. But as it fights to stay in operation--and fends off a new suit by music publishers--Lime Wire has swapped Wilson Sonsini for Fulbright.

The heirs to the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien claim they haven't seen a cent from the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy, which grossed more than $6 billion. They want $220 million, according to a suit filed by their lawyers at Greenberg Glusker.

You couldn't ask for a whole lot more excitement (at least for patent lawyers) than Tuesday's double feature. In the morning: arguments in Therasense v. Becton Dickinson, the case that is widely expected to redefine standards for the inequitable conduct claims that have swamped the courts in recent years. And in the afternoon: EchoStar's last, best chance to get out from under a $100 million contempt ruling in its epic infringement fight with TiVo.

A Los Angeles jury handed film financier David Bergstein a big win this week in his case against attorney Susan Tregub. And according to one of Bergstein's lawyers, the verdict is also very good news for his separate suit against Stroock & Stroock & Lavan and others.

The deal, which comes before the agency that oversees Fannie and Freddie filed any suit against BofA, is the best indicator to date of the potential value of buyback claims against issuers of mortgage-backed securities. The bad news for investors? Analysts say BofA's $2.8 billion payout is a bargain for the bank.

We could devote a whole blog to the litigation warhorse that is Rambus Inc., but in the interest of diversity (and our sanity), we've settled for occasional roundups as events warrant. That time, loyal readers, has come again, with a pair of recent developments that lend at least a tiny bit of clarity to Rambus's long-term prospects.