The Second Circuit's refusal to enjoin Ecuadorian plaintiffs from enforcing their $18 billion judgment against Chevron left the company's investment arbitration against Ecuador as its first global line of defense. It will be a tough defense for both Ecuador and the plaintiffs to overcome.

A judge has ordered the billionaire media entrepreneur and Greek Coca-Cola bottling heir Alki David to stop calling his new online TV service BarryDriller.com, ruling that the name is misleadingly similar to that of another much bigger media mogul, Barry Diller.

In 2001 Senator Peter Fitzgerald recommended Patrick Fitzgerald for the Chicago U.S. Attorney's job precisely because Fitzgerald--then a Manhattan assistant U.S. attorney best known for terrorism prosecutions--had not even the remotest connection to the state's entrenched political establishment. Pat Fitzgerald didn't know Illinois, and Illinois didn't know Pat Fitzgerald. Seven years later, the prosecutor has had a profound influence on the state. For his long-standing insistence that those who wield power are not above the law, Patrick Fitzgerald is this week's Litigator of the Week.

One possible reason for the Bush administration backlog in government intervention in False Claims Act cases? The former DOJ official in charge of investigating them allegedly dismissed whistle-blowers as "crazy" and threw away their complaints. Now, after he allegedly scrubbed his computer hard drive to thwart an investigation of his office, he's reportedly set to enter a guilty plea.

Patent assertion entity Intellectual Ventures claims that seven of its patents have been infringed by Motorola's smartphones. Also: the Federal Circuit rules for the third time on a patent for a Novo Nordisk diabetes medication, and an Eastern District of Texas judge with a heavy IP caseload gives some tips on appearing in his court.

Litigation involving MBIA has been keeping investors on edge for four years now, as the bond insurer wages war with the banks whose financial products it insured in the run-up to the economic crisis. It's also generated some wrenching reversals of fortune for the lead lawyers battling over MBIA's 2009 restructuring, which the banks say allowed the company to shirk its obligations to structured finance policyholders.