Welcome back for another week of What’s Next, where we report on the intersection of law and technology. Here’s what we’ve got for you today.

>> The Northern District of California’s chief district judge must decide unprecedented cryptocurrency questions.

>> Gilead seeks to fend off collusion claims.

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Mark Lemley, a Durie Tangri attorney representing the plaintiffs, did not take too kindly to the association, calling it “remarkable.”

“A law firm is a single integrated enterprise that acts like a single firm,” said Lemley, who is also a professor at Stanford Law School. “If instead what happened was lawyers, who were all part of the San Francisco Bar but worked for different firms, agreed they would not compete with each other, that would be illegal.”

When Chen said the agreements did not seem “unusual,” Lemley retorted that the difference in this case is that the defendants are horizontal competitors.

“It’s not Apple making an agreement with an iPhone distributor,” Lemley said. “It’s Apple and Samsung saying, ‘Let’s enter into an agreement where we don’t compete with each other anymore.’”