Requests are due March 15 to participate in a Copyright Office roundtable April 8 on Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which includes safe harbor and takedowns. Friday's Federal Register notice seeks input on recent domestic case law interpreting provisions of the DMCA safe harbor framework and recent international legal and policy developments on liability for infringing content online.
The FTC hasn’t “come close to meeting its burden” in proving Qualcomm has a mobile chip monopoly (see 1811060021), the company said Wednesday, the day after closing argument in California federal court. “Real-world” evidence offered at trial shows how the chipmaker's “years of R&D and innovation fostered competition, and growth for the entire mobile economy,” benefiting consumers worldwide, said Qualcomm General Counsel Don Rosenberg. The FTC, with Apple and Intel support, in mid-January argued Qualcomm blocked competitors from entering the market by charging exorbitant royalty rates, resulting in higher phone prices for consumers. The agency didn’t comment Wednesday.
The Copyright Royalty Board is soliciting participation in a process for determining “reasonable rates and terms for two statutory licenses permitting the digital performance” of online sound recordings and the making of ephemeral recordings between Jan. 1, 2021 and Dec. 31, 2025. Petitions to participate, and $150 filing fees, are due Feb. 4, said Thursday’s Federal Register.
A Delaware district court didn’t err in how it construed the term “dispatch” in a case involving a patent for GPS-guided maps, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Tuesday. The ruling was a win for Verizon and affiliates Networks in Motion and Telecommunication Systems in a patent dispute with Vehicle IP. The products in question are apps on mobile devices that allow users to request navigation information, the court said: “Users provide a destination to the mobile application, which prompts the application to send an inquiry to Appellees’ servers.” Vehicle IP “appeals that construction, as well as the district court’s grant of the defendants’ motion for summary judgment of no willful infringement,” the Federal Circuit ruled. “Because the district court properly construed ‘dispatch,’ we affirm.” Judge Todd Hughes wrote the decision. Judges Kathleen O’Malley and Jimmie Reyna were the other members of the panel.
A possible defense Netflix might employ in litigation brought by the publisher of the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) book series (see 1901140004) is that consumers aren't like to confuse the child-friendly books with Netflix's dark and bloody Black Mirror: Bandersnatch movie, American Enterprise Institute adjunct fellow Michael Rosen blogged Tuesday. He said Netflix also could argue the Bandersnatch popularity increased CYOA's value or that CYOA never should have been given a trademark since it's descriptive and not inherently distinctive. The suit "highlights both the importance and the unpredictability of intellectual property in pop culture," Rosen said. Netflix didn't comment.
Fossil Group will sell IP technology for smartwatches to Google for $40 million, it said Thursday. A portion of Fossil’s R&D team supporting the IP will join Google. A Fossil spokesperson emailed us Google is a longtime partner “and will continue to be." She said of the in-development IP involved, it's "not related to our current smartwatches.” Google in 2014 started Wear OS, for wearables to give people "the information and insights they need quickly, at a glance," a spokesperson emailed us. It continues to be about providing the smartwatch platform a "diverse portfolio of styles and price points," she said.
LG’s South Korean parent filed to register “webOS Auto” as a U.S. trademark Jan. 7, having established “priority” for the application Nov. 30 in Trinidad and Tobago, Patent and Trademark Office records show. Companies can use trademark law to file for protection in Trinidad and Tobago to keep trade names out of the public eye and use that as the basis for U.S. registration, as long as the application is filed at PTO within six months. LG and information technology services provider Luxoft announced a partnership at IFA to bring webOS smart TV technology to new commercial “verticals,” including automotive. LG and Luxoft demonstrated their first webOS-based car infotainment prototypes at CES last week.
Google is "using scare tactics" to lobby against the "publisher's right" being discussed in the proposed EU copyright directive, the News Media Alliance said Friday. Article 11 would give news publishers a new right to seek remuneration when their content is used by sharing platforms and news aggregators (see 1809120001). Google's "Together for Copyright" campaign says the language proposed by the European Parliament, one of the versions under consideration in "trialogue" talks between the European Commission, Parliament and Council, "may cause services like YouTube and Google Search to limit the variety of content they feature" and could leave them no choice but to "block existing and newly uploaded videos" in the EU with unknown or disputed copyright information to avoid liability. The alliance slammed Google for launching a coordinated effort against the provision so it could continue to use news content for free. Under the parliamentary version, Google wouldn't have to publish or pay for content, nor would it have to seek licenses from publishers, the alliance said: It would give news publishers more options when deciding how to make content available online. "Unlike Google's recommendation to let publishers waive their right to protect their content online, the Parliament's version ... would create certainty and remove the guess work" for publishers and companies that want to use new content online for commercial purposes by setting a new standard, the alliance said. The next trialogue meeting is Jan. 21, a diplomatic official said. Google didn't comment.
Despite industry-altering technology, record labels are discovering and promoting music more than ever by “using radically new means to support artists,” RIAA CEO Mitch Glazier wrote Thursday. Hundreds of digital services are licensed to deliver streaming music, and labels are investing more than ever in artists and repertoire, marketing and “other artist support activities” like data insights, Glazier wrote. He cited a report by New York University Steinhardt Music Business Program Director Larry Miller.
CableLabs and NCTA collaborated on a series of 10G trademark applications Friday in preparation for the cable ISP industry’s CES rollout Monday of its 10-gigabit broadband initiative for deployments planned for as soon as late 2021 (see 1901070048), Patent and Trademark Office records show. NCTA’s application was to trademark a stylized 10G commercial logo, and CableLabs filed for four plain-text certification marks that would be reserved for industry-compliant 10G products and services: (1) CableLabs 10G Certified; (2) 10G Ready; (3) 10G Certified; (4) CableLabs 10G Ready. NCTA says cable companies and CableLabs are doing 10G lab trials now, with field trials to start in 2020 and market deployment likely to begin 12-18 months after trials are complete.