A federal judge dismissed an antitrust lawsuit accusing six dominant academic publishers of colluding to set the terms of peer review and submission practices, ending a high-profile legal challenge to scholarly-publishing norms. The suit, brought by several academics including Lucina Uddin, alleged that publishers' rules amounted to a conspiracy to fix the price of peer-review labor at zero and restrict author options. U.S. District Judge Hector Gonzalez found the complaint relied on "inferential leaps" and lacked direct evidence of an illegal conspiracy. The ruling removes immediate legal pressure on Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Sage and Wolters Kluwer, but the decision leaves unresolved policy debates about peer-review compensation, transparency and publishers’ market power. The case's dismissal may defuse one avenue for reform but keeps attention on legislative and institutional actions to change journal economics.