CTA applied to register VOICE + as a trademark to be used for TVs, Patent and Trademark Office records show. CTA “has a bona fide intention, and is entitled, to use the mark in commerce,” said the Oct. 21 application. The association declined comment Thursday.

International Trade Commission Administrative Law Judge MaryJoan McNamara set an April 2022 target date for completing the Tariff Act Section 337 investigation into allegations that LG, Samsung and TCL smart TVs and MediaTek, MStar and Realtek video processors infringe four DivX patents on adaptive bit rate streaming (see 2010140042), said her order (login required) posted Wednesday in docket 337-TA-1222. Under the ITC’s “pandemic evacuation” plan, ALJs won’t accept filings on paper, CDs or other physical media, she said. Hearings will be on Webex until the ITC issues notice that its headquarters “will once more be open” to the public, she said. Her order scheduled the first evidentiary hearing for July 7 “at a location to be announced closer to the Hearing date.”

CTA doesn’t “anticipate needing any further extensions” of the Patent and Trademark Office’s deadline for filing a statement of use (SOU) in the association’s application for the NEXTGEN TV logo as a certification mark on ATSC 3.0-compliant TVs, emailed Brian Markwalter, senior vice president-research and standards. CTA was granted a six-month extension last week to April 21, and is entitled to four more (see 2010230046). The original SOU deadline “was around the same time that compliant TVs with the logo were entering the market,” Markwalter said Monday. “Now that compliant TVs from multiple manufacturers are in the market and the logo is clearly in use, CTA is in the process of filing the appropriate SOU with evidence of use in commerce.” PTO requires SOUs before issuing registration certificates to prevent applicants from intentionally hoarding trademarks.

The Patent and Trademark Office granted CTA its first six-month deadline extension request for a statement of use (SOU) in its application to register the NEXTGEN TV logo as a certification mark for ATSC 3.0-compliant TVs (see 1909260021), said an agency notice Friday. PTO requires the SOU before a registration certificate can be issued to prevent applicants from hoarding trademarks they have no intention of using commercially. Applicants are entitled to five deadline extensions of six months each but must file the SOU within three years after the issue date of the notice of allowance, which in CTA’s case would be April 21, 2023. CTA has a “continued bona fide intention” to use the logo in commerce, said its Wednesday extension request. PTO doesn’t require applicants to say why they want SOU deadline extensions, and CTA didn’t offer an explanation. The association didn't comment Friday. CTA last landed a certification mark registration certificate from PTO in April 2019 for the 4K Ultra HD logo, but not before the association filed for three SOU deadline extensions over two years.

Cable TV advertising interconnects are supposed to be "a fair, inclusive, efficient and competitive marketplace for advertisers, cable operators and consumers," Viamedia said Tuesday. It responded to NCTA's amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to hear Comcast's appeal of an appellate court's decision in antitrust litigation brought by Viamedia (see 2010140013). Viamedia supported interconnects "as long as they are properly administered by the Interconnect manager on behalf of current and prospective cable operators which compete for advertising dollars as well as video and broadband subscribers. A great modern example is the New York City Interconnect which features a board of directors and oversight designed to help ensure fair and competitive pricing, proper inventory allocation and full participation from all area cable operators.” It said it wasn't commenting on last week's other SCOTUS amicus briefs because they echo what was filed previously with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

International Trade Commissioners voted to open a Tariff Act Section 337 investigation into Philips allegations that Dell, HP and Lenovo PCs, Hisense, LG and TCL smart TVs and Intel, MediaTek and Realtek processors infringe Philips high-bandwidth digital content protection patents (see 2010080048 or 2010060026), said a notice (login required) posted Monday in docket 337-TA-1224. Respondents have 20 days to respond. The investigation was assigned (login required) to Administrative Law Judge Cameron Elliot. Philips seeks an exclusion order against the allegedly infringing products and components.

Extensive case law supports withdrawing Patent and Trademark Office refusal to approve Filmmaker Mode as a registered certification mark, argued the UHD Alliance's request for reconsideration. PTO examining attorney Catherine Caycedo rejected UHDA’s application. Filmmaker Mode, introduced in August 2019, is the uniformly named ease-of-access TV picture setting free of the motion-smoothing and other image processing that creators disdain for rendering their content in the living room as if it were shot on high-speed video rather than film (see 2004090032). Hisense, LG, Samsung and Vizio are the TV brands backing Filmmaker Mode in the U.S. The words in the Filmmaker Mode logo are “unregistrable” because they are “merely descriptive of an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose, or use of the goods applicant will certify,” said Caycedo in April. Wednesday, UHDA asked her to reconsider “under the standard that to be considered merely descriptive, a mark must immediately describe a quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose, or use of the goods.” Caycedo didn’t respond to questions Friday. UHDA's next recourse would be to take the case to PTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. UHDA President Mike Fidler declined comment.

Google’s proposed $2.1 billion Fitbit purchase (see 1911010051 or 1911010054) raises “serious competition and privacy concerns" and risks harming people in the wearables, advertising and digital health markets, warned 19 global consumer and citizen groups Thursday. “This takeover must therefore only be approved if merger remedies can effectively prevent those harms.” The groups said they fear Google could shut rival manufacturers out of the wearables market by “degrading their interoperability” with Android devices. The takeover also risks jeopardizing rivals’ access to wearables data in “digital health markets to the detriment of innovation in these critical nascent markets,” they said. It would bolster Google’s “unparalleled market power” in online advertising by giving it “a further data advantage in the personalisation of ads through its ownership of Fitbit’s user database,” they said. Regulators need to get Google to commit to conditional “safeguards,” they said. U.S.-based groups included New America's Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge. Google didn’t comment.

The International Trade Commission launched a Tariff Act Section 337 investigation into allegations that LG, Samsung and TCL smart TVs and MediaTek, MStar and Realtek video processors infringe four DivX patents on adaptive bit rate streaming (see 2009160052), said a posting (login required) Wednesday in docket 337-TA-1222. The ITC also denied Realtek’s request for a 100-day adjudication into the chipmaker’s challenge that DivX was unlikely to meet the “domestic industry” requirement under commission rules (see 2009260001). “The suggested issues for resolution appear likely to require significant third party discovery and thus may be too complex to be decided within 100 days of institution,” said a Wednesday order (login required). The investigation was assigned to Administrative Law Judge MaryJoan McNamara, said a separate notice (login required) Wednesday. The respondents will have 20 days to file replies to the investigation notice after they're served with the papers. None commented Wednesday. DivX's Sept. 10 complaint seeks an exclusion order against the allegedly infringing products.

LG Electronics and Samsung Display applied to trademark QNED for quantum nano emitting diode display technology, Patent and Trademark Office records show. LG’s application was Sept. 8, Samsung’s Sept. 25, both listing a wide diversity of possible uses for TVs, smartphones, tablets and digital signage. A QNED display uses gallium nitride-based blue-light-emitting nanorod LEDs in place of OLED as the blue light source, emailed Display Supply Chain Consultants President Bob O’Brien Thursday. QNED is "a really cool idea and could bring some real benefits but I think it will be a while before we see QNED in products," emailed Nanosys Director-Marketing Jeff Yurek. "You would still use QDs as a color conversion layer in a QNED stack," he said of quantum dots.