The Copyright Alliance urged consumers to exercise caution to avoid buying products that contain counterfeit or pirated content. “In addition to inadvertently purchasing a dud gift for someone special, those who fail to heed these warnings may find that they receive unwanted ‘gifts’ of their own -- such as malware, identity theft or stolen credit cards,” CEO Keith Kupferschmid said in a Thursday news release. Consumers should always be aware that “if a product price seems too good to be true, it probably is,” the alliance said. “Be especially careful about extreme bargains on software, music, movies and video games.” The group also suggested consumers buy products only from secure websites, review product packaging for glaring errors as a way of identifying counterfeit products and consult guides on legitimate online retailers.

Pandora said it signed a multiyear licensing agreement with independent publisher Songs Music Publishing to cover Songs' entire music catalog. Pandora didn't disclose the specific terms of the agreement but said Tuesday it “allows SONGS to obtain its goal of delivering improved performance royalties for its songwriters while Pandora will benefit from greater rate certainty and the ability to add new flexibility to the company's product offering over time.” The licensing agreement “creates business benefits for Pandora, while modernizing and equalizing compensation for SONGS and its songwriters in the U.S.,” Pandora said. “Now is the time to move past the over-regulation of songwriter rights and towards a market-based approach to streaming music,” said Songs CEO Matt Pincus in a Pandora news release. “This agreement is a big step forward in a long conversation about fair and equitable compensation for all songwriters and publishers.”

The U.S. International Trade Commission voted to open a Section 337 Tariff Act investigation (337-TA-973) into allegations that Jawbone UP fitness trackers infringe Fitbit patents, the agency said in a Dec. 1 announcement. Fitbit requested the investigation in a Nov. 2 complaint, asking for a limited exclusion order and cease and desist order banning import and sale of the infringing fitness trackers. Jawbone representatives didn’t comment Monday.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Friday that a U.S. District Court in Sioux City, Iowa, was correct in deciding Leigh Leaverton, one of several people sued by Killer Joe copyright owner Killer Joe Nevada for downloading that film via a BitTorrent computer program, wasn't entitled to attorney’s fees after Killer Joe Nevada moved to dismiss its suit against Leaverton. Killer Joe Nevada moved to dismiss with prejudice after Leaverton denied downloading Killer Joe. Leaverton had sought a declaratory judgment that she hadn’t infringed on Killer Joe Nevada’s copyright and attorney’s fees in the case, arguing that awarding attorney’s fees would deter Killer Joe Nevada and others from suing subscribers based on identification from an IP address without further investigation. U.S. District Court Judge Mark Bennett granted Killer Joe Nevada’s dismissal request in 2014 and denied both Leaverton’s counterclaim for declaratory judgment and her request for attorney’s fees, which Leaverton appealed on a claim that it was an abuse of the district court’s discretion. Although all parties agree Leaverton is the prevailing party in the case, attorney’s fees “are not awarded to the prevailing party automatically or as a matter of course,” said Appeals Judge Duane Benton in his opinion for the three-judge 8th Circuit panel. Judges James Loken and Bobby Shepard also affirmed the district court ruling. “Awarding attorney’s fees to a prevailing party ‘is a matter for the district court’s “equitable discretion,” to be exercised in an evenhanded manner by considering factors such as whether the lawsuit was frivolous or unreasonable, the losing litigant’s motivations, the need in a particular case to compensate or deter, and the purposes of the Copyright Act,’” the 8th Circuit said. The district court didn’t abuse its discretion by saying Killer Joe Nevada’s lawsuit and identification of Leaverton as a defendant were reasonable since Leaverton didn’t cite any binding authority that a copyright lawsuit “based on an infringer’s IP address is frivolous or unreasonable,” the 8th Circuit said. The district court also didn’t abuse its discretion by failing to explicitly consider Leaverton’s financial status in its ruling and by deciding Killer Joe Nevada lacked improper motivation for suing Leaverton, the 8th Circuit said.

The type of downloadable security supported by TiVo in the report from the FCC Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee would open up retail set-top box manufacturers that use a guide combined with a DVR to being sued by the company for patent infringement, said NCTA in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-64. It responded to Media Bureau questions about the recordability of multichannel video programming distributor content. “Some observers have noted that TiVo is seeking to ‘preserve its lucrative patent business’ by increasing manufacturer exposure to its patent claims,” NCTA said. The app-based approach favored by MVPDs isn’t as exposed to patent lawsuits, NCTA said. Also in a blog post Wednesday, NCTA said the set-top security/navigation integration ban will sunset Friday under the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization. “The Integration Ban was an unnecessary technology mandate from the late 1990’s that cost billions of dollars with no real consumer benefit,” NCTA said: “The STELAR legislation approved overwhelmingly by a bipartisan Congress is significant because it recognizes that innovation in the television industry shouldn’t be held back by a mandate that penalizes one sector (cable operators) while others are free to experiment.” The ban’s sunset doesn’t mean cable companies will stop supporting CableCARDs, the association said. “In the end, we want customers to access their favorite content however they want. And if that means supporting CableCARDs to decrypt video signals in retail devices, then that’s exactly what we’ll do.” TiVo had no immediate comment Wednesday.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will perform maintenance on its online systems Saturday, making access unavailable to the public and private Patent Application and Information Retrieval systems, plus the electronic filing systems, it said in a news release Monday. The online systems will be down from 12:01 a.m. EST Saturday until 11:59 p.m. EST that day, said the PTO. During the outage period, patent applicants are encouraged to submit documents and fees by first class or priority mail, or by facsimile transmission, it said.

The Copyright Office’s Public Information Office extended phone business hours on a trial basis through Dec. 31 “to assess the effect of extended hours on stakeholders outside” the Eastern time zone, the office said Monday. CO staff will field phone inquiries 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, but the CO’s in-person office hours will remain the same throughout the pilot period. The CO still will be closed on Christmas Day. The CO said it will “determine whether to adjust its business hours on a long-term basis” after the pilot experiment ends.

MusicFIRST said its launch Tuesday of a website that parodies the Music. Innovation. Consumers. (MIC) Coalition’s own website is a bid to highlight the MIC Coalition’s “real agenda,” which MusicFIRST described as “fighting against fair compensation for musicians and halting all progress on performance rights.” MusicFIRST backs passage of the Fair Play Fair Pay Act (HR-1733), while NAB and several other MIC Coalition members oppose the bill. The MIC Coalition hasn’t taken a position on HR-1733, which would require most terrestrial radio stations to begin paying performance royalties and would require digital broadcasters to begin paying royalties for pre-1972 sound recordings. The bill also would require satellite broadcasters to pay royalties at market rates (see 1504160050). The “Moneymakers Ignoring Creators" Coalition is “an anti-artist coalition of radio giants and some of the biggest and wealthiest corporations” that are lobbying to “reduce payments to artists and musicians,” MusicFIRST said on its parody website. A MIC Coalition spokeswoman disputed MusicFIRST’s characterization of the group’s mission. MIC Coalition members “are working towards a growing music marketplace that balances all interests, while MusicFirst pursues a strategy that misrepresents and misinforms,” the MIC Coalition said in a statement. “While it's not surprising, it is unfortunate, in poor taste and breathtakingly short-sighted.”

The FCC got "the message loud and clear" from fans of free Wi-Fi router software, the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) said Wednesday of the agency's clarification earlier last month (see 1511120056) that it won't encourage manufacturers to prevent firmware modifications. EFF and the Save Wifi coalition relaunched an FCC public comment platform so people could comment on the third-party firmware issue, and more than 1,000 people did, wrote EFF Director-Copyright Activism Parker Higgins. "Router makers rarely provide much in the way of support or documentation to people developing new software, and have a bad record on delivering software updates to end users," he wrote on EFF's blog. "We'll continue to monitor the progress of this proposed rule to ensure it can't be used to jeopardize the important role that free third-party software continues to play in the router ecosystem."

Colleges and other educational institutions not affiliated with NPR will see the royalty rates they pay for the use of published nondramatic musical compositions in SESAC’s catalog rise Dec. 24 2 percent to $149 per station, the Copyright Royalty Board said in Tuesday’s Federal Register. The 2 percent rate increase is the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) that the CRB institutes annually as part of its 2012 regulations governing 2013-2017 royalty payments. COLA-related royalty rate increases are determined by the change in the cost of living calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index, but can’t be less than 2 percent annually, the CRB said. BLS said last week that the 2015 cost of living increased 0.2 percent from last year. The CRB also said it’s leaving the royalty rates that satellite carriers pay for a compulsory license unchanged for 2016, based on the BLS’ cost-of-living calculation.