A federal judge in New Orleans has accepted BP's $4 billion criminal plea agreement over its role in the catastrophic 2010 oil spill that fouled the Gulf of Mexico. But BP's lawyers still have plenty of work to do managing the company's massive liabilities over the disaster.

Reversing a lower court judge, an appeals court in Seattle ruled that Tremont Group Holdings and others must face tort and state securities law claims brought by FutureSelect Portfolio Management., a Redmond, Wash.-based investment advisor that lost $195 million of its clients' money in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

After seven years of litigation and two months of trial, Novell's $1 billion antitrust case against Microsoft ended in a hung jury on Friday. But Novell's lawyers at Dickstein Shaprio could take some consolation from the fact that the one hold-out on the jury didn't much care for Microsoft's star witness, chairman Bill Gates.

The failed data processing company--which now exists only to prosecute two patents on check imaging--just added a $27 million East Texas jury verdict against U.S. Bank to the more than $100 million in licensing deals it's racked up. But will its success continue once the Supreme Court rules in the Bilski business methods patent case?

Did Alcatel and Lucent, before their merger, scheme to divert valuable Lucent patents to a Delaware trust in order to sidestep Alcatel's obligation to share certain patents with companies like Microsoft and Dell? Starting Monday, that question will be before a Delaware Chancery court in a trial that will be streamed live on the Web by the Courtroom View Network.