Our summary writers have highlighted some interesting cases this week — all from state supreme courts.

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled on an assault weapons ban, remanding it back to the trial court to determine whether the law comports with the Second Amendment. In Wilson v. Cook County, the court found that given the early stage of the litigation, it cannot be said conclusively whether “assault weapons” as defined by the ordinance fall within the scope of rights protected by the Second Amendment. The question requires an empirical inquiry, beyond the scope of both the record and judicial notice. The county has not had an opportunity to establish a nexus between the ordinance and the protected governmental interest.

A federal appeals court in New York reversed a lower court ruling in Viacom’s copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube and Google over user uploads of thousands of popular TV shows like South Park and ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

“A reasonable jury could find that YouTube had actual knowledge or awareness of specific infringing activity on its website.”

The new decision (read it below) reverses the June 23, 2010 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granting summary judgment to YouTube and Google.

Facebook’s and Mark Zuckerberg’s lawyers told a federal court yesterday that convicted felon Paul Ceglia’s latest discovery requests should be put on hold, and that Ceglia’s lawsuit claiming a fifty-percent (50%) ownership stake in Facebook should be dismissed.

Lawyers at Gibson Dunn were emphatic that the court should not “perversely reward [Ceglia] for his ongoing efforts to derail the discovery process” by keeping his lawsuit alive.

Perhaps more importantly, they argue, Ceglia’s failure to dispute that emails he sent in 2004 to a then assistant attorney general at the Illinois Attorney General’s office “conclusively proves that the [disputed] Work for Hire Document is a fake.”

Facebook filed its answer and counterclaims against Yahoo! today in the Silicon Valley patent battle between the social networking giant and the fading portal.

Yahoo filed its patent lawsuit three weeks ago, and Facebook fired back a salvo of patent infringement counterclaims right back at the portal.

Facebook claims that Yahoo is violating the following patents:

Here is a rundown of March’s highest scoring lawyers on Justia Legal Answers, along with a look at which Justia Dockets legal filings, Tech Law blog posts, and Facebook posts readers viewed the most.

Justia Legal Answers’ Top 10 Legal Answerers for March 2012

1. Min G. Kim, 880 points, 18 answers
2. David Philip Shapiro, 705 points, 14 answers
3. Gojko Kasich, 600 points, 12 answers
4. Vincent Ronald Ross, 560 points, 12 answers
5. Andrew Bresalier, 500 points, 10 answers
6. Daniel Marc Berman, 430 points, 18 answers
7. Janet Rubel 400 points, 8 answers
8. James Kenneth Sweeney, 300 points, 6 answers
9. Benjamin P. Urbelis 250 points, 5 answers
10. Michael Howard Joseph, 210 points, 5 answers

Martha Davis, a founding member of the ’80s rock band The Motels, filed a class action lawsuit today against the EMI record label.

Davis and her group are known for their 1980’s chart topping hits, “Only the Lonely” and “Suddenly Last Summer.”

The legendary songstress accuses the label that she and The Motels originally signed with of shorting her out of music royalties due under the parties’ original contract (read the lawsuit below).

We have some interesting cases from our daily summary writers this week. At the intersection of reality TV and the law comes Edmonds v. Oktibbeha County (5th Cir.). In this case, the Court upheld the denial of a 42 USC 1983 claim of a coerced confession from a minor, after the minor went on the Dr. Phil show and told a national television audience that deputies did not coerce him into confession.

The Maryland Court of Appeals issued an interesting decision in a child custody case that involved a conflict of laws with Japanese family courts. In Toland v. Futagi, the Court upheld the Japanese decision to award custody of the minor to her maternal grandmother, a Japanese national. The child grew up in Japan and spent her whole life there. When her mother died, the grandmother took custody. The Maryland Court found that this decision did not infringe on the due process rights of the American father, and that the lower court properly declined to exercise jurisdiction over the child, who had no connection to the state.

East Bay soul funk legend Tower of Power filed a class-action lawsuit against Warner Music on Tuesday, charging that the record label Warner Music, Inc. stiffed them out of music royalties by mischaracterizing digital downloads as sales, instead of licenses that pay artists a much higher premium.

Tower of Power co-founders Emilio Castillo and Stephen “Doc” Kupka’s breach of contract case charges that their 1972 agreement (the ‘Agreement’) with Warner Music entitles the band to 50% of gross receipts for Warner’s redistribution by digital downloads download via third parties.

Warner, the band contends, intentionally mischaracterizes these digital downloads as sales to pay them at a ten-percent (10%) royalty rate under the ‘sold’ equation of the parties’ original 1972 Agreement.

The South African holder of a U.S. patent for a Data Vending System (No. 6,799,084) sued Apple yesterday, alleging that the company’s iTunes Store infringes his patent for a system that stores a digital media database, processes payments, and calculates royalties that are due to copyright holders for downloads of their music and videos.

The USPTO issued the patent to Benjamin Grobler in 2004.

In an outrageous misunderstanding of students’ off-campus free speech rights, an Indiana school district expelled a high school senior just three months shy of his graduation for tweeting an F-bomb from home at 2:30 AM.

Austin Carroll says that he sent the offending F-bomb tweet from home, from his own computer. He concedes that he agrees with the district that his tweet was inappropriate, but says he “just did it to be funny.” The Garrett-Keyser-Butler Community School District (the ‘District’) was not amused, claiming that he tweeted from school.

The school says that it reportedly learned about Austin’s tweet when he was online in school.

Even if the tweet was made off campus, it still doesn’t appear to have violated the school district’s “Responsible Use Policy” (the ‘Policy’) that is largely focused on integrating technology into classroom instruction, and making students pay for repairing damaged school notebooks and iPads (read it below).