A U.S. senator once called the United Nations Oil-For-Food Program "the biggest financial scandal ever." But unlike other big financial scandals, plaintiffs lawyers haven't been able to make much hay out of the U.N. program's collapse.

Patent holders can exhale. Their statements during reexamination hearings will no longer be enough to open the door for a potential infringer to invoke the dreaded "intervening rights" defense.

Last summer, the government revised its standards for evaluating mergers after losing attempts to block a string of deals. The new standards were supposed to shift emphasis away from analysis of relevant markets. But in the first real test of the new guidelines, a California federal judge was more concerned with market share than the government's ideas.

Probably no one was more anxious to read Judge Beryl Howell's written ruling than lawyers for AT&T and T-Mobile at Kellogg Huber and Cleary Gottlieb, who are fighting off the Justice Department's challenge to their own clients' planned $39 billion merger. They won't find much to like in Judge Howell's opinion.

A $5 million investment in this case could turn into a very nice payday for the litigation funding company Burford Capital. It's entitled to 33 percent of any settlement before judgment and 40 percent of any judgment.

The appeals court affirmed a lower court's finding that a digital music download is not a public performance under copyright law. It also ordered a revaluation of the fees Yahoo! and RealNetworks owe to play copyrighted music on their sites.