Legislators can do more to ensure a functioning music licensing marketplace, various groups told the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee Tuesday. The subcommittee had a field hearing in Nashville looking at the marketplace in the five years since passage of the Music Modernization Act (see 2208150042). The Music.Innovation.Consumers Coalition, in a letter to the subcommittee, argued for more transparency for licensing public performance rights for musical works. The coalition includes NAB, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, CTA, the Digital Media Association and various trade groups representing bars, breweries and consumer-facing businesses. The coalition recently wrote the register of copyrights highlighting the need for a “comprehensive database of public performance of musical works data.” They wrote that licensees rely on “fragmented and unreliable” data when trying to negotiate with an ever-growing list of performance rights organizations like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. The coalition looks forward to working with the subcommittee on “solutions” for improving data transparency, the coalition wrote Tuesday. The musicFIRST Coalition wrote the subcommittee in support of the American Music Fairness Act Monday (see 2302020068). Members include the Recording Industry Association of America, Sound Exchange, American Association of Independent Musicians and the Recording Academy. Introduced by House Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the AM/FM Act would “finally require U.S. broadcasters to recognize the property rights of music artists and compensate them for the use of their songs on domestic AM/FM radio,” which would bring radio in line with streaming services and digital platforms. NAB opposes the AM/FM Act (see 2108120059).

Congress should pass legislation that would require radio stations to pay performance royalties for radio airplay to owners of sound recordings, the Free State Foundation said Monday (see 2108120059). The House Judiciary Committee passed the American Music Fairness Act (HR-4130) Wednesday by voice vote. FSF noted the bill would subject radio stations to the same royalty obligations as satellite radio and music streaming services: It would also “enable sound recording owners to begin receiving from foreign radio stations public performance royalties that have long been withheld because of the shortcomings of U.S. copyright law.” Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Alex Padilla, D-Calif., introduced companion legislation in the Senate.

The Copyright Office's online recordation system, part of its enterprise copyright system modernization work, is the first part of ECS to be widely available to the public, the Library of Congress said Monday. The online recordation system will eventually become the primary recordation process, and is much faster at processing submitted documents, it said. Most users are saving at least 90 days in processing times, it said.

Congress should allow sound recording owners to collect royalties when their songs are played on the radio, Free State Foundation Policy Studies Director Seth Cooper wrote Monday. Broadcasters and the recording industry have disagreed on a longstanding legislative debate about the prospect of performance royalty payments for radio airplay (see 2108120059). Congress should stop privileging “radio stations with free rider use of copyrighted sound recordings that belong to third parties,” Cooper wrote in support of the American Music Fairness Act (HR-4130).

Netflix is seeking an order declaring it doesn’t infringe “any valid claim” of Broadcom patents essential to the H.264 and H.265 video codec standards, said the streaming company’s counterclaim Monday in docket 3:20-cv-04677 at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The case turned 2 years old July 14 on allegations that Netflix infringed a dozen Broadcom patents. Netflix also said it countersued to enforce Broadcom’s “contractual commitments” to license its standard-essential patents (SEPs) for H.264 and H.265 on reasonable and nondiscriminatory (RAND) terms. Broadcom was obligated under the ITU’s “common patent policy” to publicly declare it would license the SEPs on RAND terms, said Netflix. Broadcom “broke those promises” when it failed to identify its SEPs to Netflix and failed to offer Netflix the required RAND licenses, it said. Broadcom instead demanded that Netflix license, on “unreasonable and exorbitant terms,” Broadcom’s entire U.S. patent portfolio, “most or all of which, is irrelevant and therefore worthless to Netflix,” it said. Broadcom didn’t comment Tuesday.

Abby North is a board member of both the Los Angeles Chapter of the Association of Independent Music Publishers and the International Association for Artists & Rightsholders (see 2208150042).

News organizations have “significant” copyright protections under current law, and the “challenges of funding journalism in the internet era do not appear to be copyright-specific,” the Copyright Office reported Thursday. The CO delivered the report at the request of Senate Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; ranking member Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; and Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas; Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; and Chris Coons, D-Del. The CO studied press publisher protections and evaluated the viability of EU-like protections that would allow media to demand payment for “third-party online uses of their news content, specifically from large news aggregators,” the CO said. The office doesn’t believe it has been proven that “any shortcomings in copyright law pose an obstacle to incentivizing journalism or that new copyright-like protections would solve the problems that press publishers face.” The CO doesn’t recommend “adopting a new ancillary copyright to bolster press publishers’ protections.” The report confirms what Re:Create, small publishers, consumers, libraries and academics have been saying: “a link tax or other ancillary copyright protections are not necessary, effective or constitutional,” said Re:Create Executive Director Joshua Lamel in a statement: All copyright-related policy options for supporting local journalism “must be off the table.” The report makes clear that copyright law isn’t the source or solution to journalism’s crisis, said Public Knowledge Senior Policy Counsel Meredith Rose: The report “helpfully notes that creating an ancillary right (such as a right to prevent outside linking to content) would go far beyond the bounds of existing copyright law, would likely be unable to accommodate basic free speech protections, and would otherwise raise constitutional concerns.” “There’s no question that objective journalism is a public good and critical to informing voters, so we appreciate the Copyright Office’s conclusion that new, European-style regulations are not necessary given existing copyright protections for news content,” said Computer and Communications Industry Association President Matt Schruers. "We were pleased that the Copyright Office recognized that the central issue is about lack of bargaining power with the dominant platforms," said News Media Alliance General Counsel Danielle Coffey. "However, they didn’t commit to a solution and that’s where Congress has stepped in," she said.

BlackBerry’s sale of its “legacy” patent portfolio for $600 million (see 2201310001) remains on hold as buyer Catapult IP Innovations works on securing the financing, said CEO John Chen on an earnings call Thursday for its fiscal Q1 ended May 31. Because the sale has taken longer than expected, BlackBerry is “no longer under exclusivity” with Catapult, and “we are free to explore new options as they come our way,” he said. “We will provide more details as and when appropriate.” Under terms of the Catapult deal, BlackBerry will get back a license to the patents being sold, which mainly involve mobile devices, messaging, wireless networking and other businesses in which BlackBerry is no longer actively involved. “We are being approached by others” seeking to buy the legacy patents, said Chen. “I am not actively looking” for buyers “or starting from square one,” he said. “I want to make sure that the shareholder knows that we are not just stuck with one option,” he said. “We do expect to see, and we would like to see, the previously announced deal with Catapult” progress to completion, he said. “We have been getting calls, and we are now responding to the calls because now the exclusivity has expired.”

Withdrawal of a 2019 policy statement on remedies for standard-essential patents subject to fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) commitment terms is the “best course of action for promoting both competition and innovation in the standards ecosystem,” DOJ said Wednesday in a joint statement with the Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Agencies made the determination after requesting public comment, following a July executive order for promoting competition. DOJ Antitrust Division Chief Jonathan Kanter said in a statement: “I am hopeful our case-by-case approach will encourage good-faith efforts to reach F/RAND licenses and create consistency for antitrust enforcement policy so that competition may flourish in this important sector of the U.S. economy.”

Eleven patent owners comprise the initial roster of licensors in the Open RAN Patent Portfolio License announced Monday by Alium, the joint venture between MPEG LA and the Unified Patents anti-patent troll consortium. Alium bills the initiative as the first patent pool “to address licensing uncertainty” in the open radio access network “infrastructure space.” Open radio access network “is a groundbreaking technology ready to blossom and grow with the availability of a pool license offering affordable access, freedom to operate, reduced litigation risk and business certainty for suppliers and users,” said Alium Manager Larry Horn, who also is MPEG LA CEO. He predicted the Alium pool license “will help speed 5G adoption and the delivery of 5G services to the public.” Royalty rates for the one-stop patent pool begin at 25 cents per “radio unit” in quantities up to 10,000, dropping to 10 cents a unit for volumes exceeding 200,000. Initial licensors are Acer, AT&T, CableLabs, Comcast, Godo Kaisha, Meta Platforms, Mitsubishi, Pantech, Philips, SK Telecom and Verizon.