Electronic Arts has invoked a California law designed to protect citizens' constitutional rights to lash back at rival Zynga in the gamemakers' ongoing legal tussle in federal court. The dispute between the competitors has become increasingly combative since EA sued Zynga for copyright infringement. The latest fusillade came Friday as EA asked a judge to throw out Zynga's counterclaim and award fees and costs under California's anti-SLAPP law.

American International Group was forced through a menacing gauntlet over the last few weeks in its $10.5 billion mortgage-backed securities case against Countrywide and Bank of America. But according to AIG and its lawyers at Quinn Emanuel, the company emerged late Wednesday with barely a scratch.

Rambus is still paying for its decision to shred reams of documents before it launched a litigation campaign against a big swath of the semiconductor industry. The latest blow came on Friday, when the judge most sympathetic to Rambus over the years ruled that the company spoliated evidence and signaled that he would reduce a $397 million judgment that Rambus won against rival SK Hynix in 2009.

An iconic liquor scored an injunction against an alleged copycat and a small furniture maker accused a larger retailer of ripping off its designs. In the smartphone wars, Samsung Electronic Co. Ltd. uncovered some ammunition in its bid to undo the $1 billion verdict it lost to Apple in August.

So why did the music industry suddenly settle with Lime Wire in the midst of a jury trial last Thursday? It's worth noting that the $105 million deal came fresh on the heels of the cross examination of Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. by Willkie Farr & Gallagher's Joseph Baio. Bronfman claimed Lime Wire had devastated the music business, but was forced to admit that he would make billions from Warner. More ominously for Bronfman, he faced the possibility of having to tell the jury about his recent insider trading conviction in France.

Charlie Verhoeven from Quinn Emanuel helped to coordinate litigation in Nokia's global IP dispute with Qualcomm. Here, he talks about the patent litigation going global.

Like Chevron at the dawn of the Lago Agrio litigation, Occidental moved to dismiss toxic tort claims by native people in the Amazon rain forest on forum non conveniens grounds. A district court said the case belonged in Peru, but the Ninth Circuit disagreed.

An army of lawyers for BP, Transocean, the DOJ and others began staking out their positions at trial on Monday in New Orleans, nearly three years after the catastrophic spill that fouled the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding coastlines.