Courts Slam Unfair Settlements and Patent Defense Tactics with Huge Attorney Awards

A US appeals court has overturned a class action settlement in a royalties lawsuit against Napster, criticising a deal that secured just $53,000 for songwriters while paying their lawyers $1.7m in legal fees. The court called the agreement "unreasonable" and said that a lower judge should not have approved a deal that saw the attorneys working on the case receive "more than thirty times the amount that the class received". The ruling went against attorneys from the law firm Michelman & Robinson LLP, who represented the plaintiffs.