The Copyright Office will post an updated version of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices-Third Edition on its website Jan. 28, Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter announced Thursday (see 1905100051). The compendium includes an “administrative manual for registrations and recordations issued by the U.S. Copyright Office on or after that date.”
A judge dismissed the Center for Democracy & Technology lawsuit against President Donald Trump that alleged his social media-related executive order violated the First Amendment (see 2006020071). U.S. District Court in Washington Judge Trevor McFadden dismissed the case with prejudice in a brief Tuesday order (Pacer). The court issued a Dec. 11 order granting the defendant’s motion for dismissal and a memorandum opinion (in Pacer), finding CDT’s “claimed injury is not concrete or imminent and is thus insufficient to establish Article III standing.” CDT had 30 days to file a motion for leave to amend its complaint. “To date, no motion for leave to amend has been filed on the docket,” McFadden wrote. CDT is considering its options, a spokesperson emailed Wednesday: "It is important that organizations be able to challenge unconstitutional executive orders."
IBM landed 9,130 U.S. patents in 2020, the most of any enterprise for the 28th-straight year, said the company Tuesday. The inventions spanned “key technology fields,” including artificial intelligence, hybrid cloud, quantum computing and cybersecurity, it said. The patents were granted to inventors in 46 states and 54 countries, it said.
The Patent and Trademark Office reopened the comment period that expired Dec. 28 to provide more time for input on applying “the traditional doctrines of trademark infringement to the e-commerce setting,” said Monday’s Federal Register. Comments are now due Jan. 25 in docket PTO-T-2020-0035 on “the effectiveness of the traditional doctrines of secondary trademark infringement” in e-commerce. PTO seeks recommendations “for resolving any shortcomings in the application of these doctrines.”
Comments are due Jan. 19 in docket 337-3520 at the International Trade Commission on public interest ramifications of the Tariff Act Section 337 import ban Ericsson seeks in a Jan. 4 complaint (login required) against Samsung smartphones, tablets and smart TVs, said Friday’s Federal Register. Ericsson alleges the Samsung devices with wireless connectivity infringe four of its patents. Ericsson asserted similar against Samsung in a New Year’s Day complaint in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas (see 2101030001). Samsung didn’t comment.
Video doorbells and IP cameras from Vivint Smart Home don’t infringe seven patents from SkyBell, SB IP Holdings and Eyetalk365 because the patents are “invalid,” commented the supplier Tuesday (login required) in International Trade Commission docket 337-3517. Arlo Technologies and SimpliSafe similarly argued a day earlier that all the allegedly infringed patents were continuations of an October 2002 application that was abandoned for nonpayment of fees and was never resurrected (see report, Jan. 7). Document snafus prevented Vivint from filing its comments until minutes after Tuesday’s deadline, it told the ITC (login required).
The Copyright Office issued a final rule Thursday for transition period cumulative reporting and royalty transfers to the mechanical licensing collective (see 2012310019). The rule requires digital music providers to “submit cumulative statements of account to the mechanical licensing collective at the conclusion of the statutory transition period in order to be eligible for the statutory limitation on liability for prior unlicensed uses of musical works.” The rule creates a “mechanism for digital music providers to rely upon royalty input estimations and make subsequent adjustments once the inputs are finalized.”
Deny the patent infringement investigation SkyBell and EyeTalk365 seek on video doorbells and IP cameras from Vivint, SimpliSafe and Arlo Technologies because the seven communications and monitoring systems patents are “invalid,” commented SimpliSafe and Arlo (login required) in International Trade Commission docket 337-3517. Tuesday was the deadline for comments. Two of the three proposed respondents argued for the case to be thrown out or decided expeditiously. No Vivint filing was posted Wednesday. The complainants didn’t respond to questions.
Neodron settled with 10 major consumer tech brands, ending “high profile legal actions concerning allegations of patent infringement against those companies,” said the technology licensor Tuesday. Neodron didn't name the companies, but filed Tariff Act Section 337 complaints at the International Trade Commission since 2019 against Amazon, Apple, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung and Sony, all seeking import bans against their devices for allegedly infringing four touch sensor patents.
Ericsson owns a “valuable portfolio” of patents used globally in cellular handsets, tablets, TVs and “many other electrical devices,” and a wide variety of Samsung smart TVs and smartphones, including the new Galaxy S20+5G flagship phone, infringe four of them, alleged a New Year’s Day complaint (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas. The oldest of the asserted patents (6,879,849) dates to April 2005 and describes an “in-built antenna” for mobile communications devices. The Galaxy S20+5G includes an “antenna pattern” formed of conductive metal located on a “specified planar surface” of a main printed circuit board, next to the phone’s millimeter-wave 5G circuitry, in violation of the patent, said Ericsson. The most recent patent (9,313,178) was granted in April 2016 for a method and system for securing over-the-top live video delivery. Samsung smart TVs and smartphones that support Google’s Widevine digital rights management system “perform the step of detecting content encryption key rotation boundaries between periods of use of different content encryption keys in decrypting retrieved content,” said the complaint. The manner in which the products do so violates the patent, it said. Ericsson seeks a judgment that Samsung’s infringement is “willful,” plus punitive and compensatory damages “in no event less than a reasonable royalty,” it said. Samsung didn’t respond to questions Monday.