IT’S BEEN A GOOD WEEK for Burford Capital, with the litigation funder stacking up wins in US courts and on Capitol Hill. Here’s a look at its victories and what they mean for Burford and the broader litigation finance sector:

• A New York judge ordered Argentina in a $16 billion case to give up its controlling stake in signature energy company YPF within 14 days, Bob Van Voris, Jonathan Gilbert, and Kevin Simauchi report. President Javier Milei must surrender 51% of the company’s shares to a global custody account. They’ll then be transferred to the plaintiffs: former shareholders suing Argentina over its 2012 nationalization of YPF. Burford is leading the litigation. Read More
• An Illinois judge allowed Burford to pursue antitrust claims against a group of turkey processors, Roy Strom reports. Burford initially spent $140 million funding the plaintiff Sysco’s claims against the processors and other industries. But the litigation funder settled with Sysco in 2023 and took over as the plaintiff itself. The defendants argued a litigation funder shouldn’t be able to pursue claims assigned to it by a plaintiff for its own benefit. Read More
• The litigation finance industry dodged a huge tax when the US Senate nixed a provision from its sweeping tax-and-spending bill that would have imposed a nearly 32% levy — down from nearly 41% in an earlier version — on “qualified litigation proceeds,” Roy Strom and Chris Cioffi report. The tax would have raised an estimated $3.5 billion over 10 years, helping offset the estimated $3.8 trillion cost of extending President Donald Trump’s first-term tax cuts. The Senate’s parliamentarian ruled that including the proposed tax in the bill violated the chamber’s rules. Read More

THE UNUSUAL SALE of genetic data as part of the DNA testing firm 23andMe’s bankruptcy proceedings has exposed privacy law loopholes and set the stage for increased regulatory scrutiny, Angélica Serrano-Román and Cassandre Coyer report.

• Judge Brian C. Walsh of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on June 27 approved the $305 million 23andMe asset sale, including the company’s trove of genetic data, to cofounder Anne Wojcicki and related nonprofit TTAM Research Institute.
• The bankruptcy raised privacy issues unusual for the court because of the sensitive nature of the data. Walsh’s approval came despite concerns about opt-in consent raised by a court-appointed privacy ombudsman and state objections to the transfer of data without explicit customer consent.
• Some of the ombudsman’s recommendations “went beyond the bankruptcy courts’ limit,” said Robert Lawless, a bankruptcy law professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “The bankruptcy court is not there to impose all sorts of rules, but to allocate the property rights determined by nonbankruptcy law.”
• Many of the more than 30 states that initially objected to the sale resolved their concerns, but California, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah remain opposed. States could consider legal action, though an appeal of the sale order would be tough due to the benefit of bankruptcy protections. They could also pressure the buyer, closely tracking what TTAM, which has committed to protecting consumers’ privacy, does with the information. 23andMe said it anticipates the sale will close around July 8. Read More

Law firms jostled for position at the top of Bloomberg Law’s league tables in the first half of the year. Read More

AN UNUSUAL APPELLATE PROCEDURE is showing up at the Federal Circuit, Michael Shapiro reports: tech companies are trying to get the court to counter administrative rulings that cut short their validity challenges to patents asserted against them in infringement lawsuits.

• Two companies, SAP America and Motorola Solutions, in June each asked the appellate court for writs of mandamus to overturn as unconstitutional the discretionary denials of their challenges at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. A coalition of industry groups, with members including Google and Ford, joined briefs supporting both actions.
• The petitions are aimed at countering a policy shift at the PTO, which recently rescinded Biden-era guidance giving patent defendants an easier procedural path to having PTAB challenges decided on the merits. The PTO has discretionarily denied 59 petitions since May. SAP and Motorola argue that the PTO yanked the rug out from under them by retroactively applying a tougher discretionary process to their challenges. Motorola said it amounted to the sort of “shenanigans” the US Supreme Court has said merit appellate scrutiny.
• The actions escalate a long-running fight over the role of the PTAB, which Congress created as an alternate forum to contest patent validity. But critics say the tribunal, with more than 200 technically trained judges, has become a “death squad” for killing patents that juries and courts might otherwise have upheld.
• The mandamus petitioners face long odds, given that the high court has noted that mandamus actions are “drastic” remedies reserved for extraordinary cases. But there’s “a bit of an ideological split” between the PTO’s new friendlier direction toward patent owners and the Federal Circuit, which owners have sometimes criticized for trimming or overturning large jury verdicts, said Scott Hejny, a McKool Smith partner. For now, until the appeals court either blesses or repudiates the PTO’s new procedures, patent lawyers expect the mandamus actions to pile up. Read More

President Trump has used executive orders to advance his agenda in a more aggressive way than any president before him, prompting legal challenges and judicial intervention.

The US Constitution does not explicitly grant the president the authority to issue executive orders. So what is the source of that power? A new Bloomberg Law video delves into the historical context and utilization of executive orders, their legal standing, and the checks and balances on their use. Watch Here

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