Licensing of the next-gen Ultra HD Blu-ray format will formally launch Aug. 24, the Blu-ray Disc Association said in a Wednesday announcement. The start of licensing comes roughly three months after the BDA announced that work on the Ultra HD Blu-ray spec was completed (see 1505120025). The delay between the spec's completion and the start of licensing activities was to allow enough time for licensing documents to be drawn up, the BDA said. But availability of the specs in mid-May gave manufacturers the green light to begin designing products to those specs, to introduce goods in time for the holiday selling season, it said. Ultra HD Blu-ray “will enable consistent and reliable delivery of Ultra HD content” to Ultra HD TV homes, which are expected to grow to 95.6 million globally in 2019 from 11.7 million in 2014, the BDA said, citing IHS projections. The BDA is confident the next-gen format “will set the standard for Ultra HD entertainment,” much as Blu-ray did for HD viewing, said Victor Matsuda, the Sony executive who chairs the BDA’s global promotions committee.

Public Knowledge urged the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday to rule in favor of SiriusXM in its appeal of earlier U.S. District Court rulings in New York that the company owed performance royalties to Flo & Eddie, who own the copyright to The Turtles' “Happy Together” and the rest of that band's music library, and other artists for the performance of The Turtles' pre-1972 sound recordings and other pre-1972 recordings. Public Knowledge disputed in an amicus brief that New York state has a public performance right for pre-1972 sound recordings, saying that it's up to state and federal legislatures to create such a right via legislation. “Not only is the precedent for such a right lacking, but the creation of a public performance right would also necessarily conflict with the detailed regulatory structure of the federal rights for sound recordings,” Public Knowledge said. “Contrary to the district court's assertions, such conflicts cannot be dealt with judicially; doing so would require legislation from the bench.” It's “unfortunate, but sound recordings made before 1972 lack federal protection,” Public Knowledge Vice President-Legal Affairs Sherwin Siy said in a news release. “Not only do states not have a history of preventing public performances of sound recordings; the federal laws don't either.”

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) wants changes made to the Innovation Act (HR-9) -- patent reform legislation set to be voted on in the full House, said a letter to House leaders Wednesday. The letter, signed by ITI CEO Dean Garfield and sent to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., supported the bill but suggested language should be added to "require plaintiffs [in patent lawsuits] to identify each claim of each patent that is allegedly infringed." Garfield also urged the House to remove a portion of the legislation that would make changes to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's patent review proceedings, saying the changes would harm patent quality.

The market, not the patent pool, “ultimately determines” whether a patent pool strikes a “fair balance” between patent holders and patent users, and “reasonable royalties are key,” an MPEG LA spokesman emailed us. He was responding to HEVC Advance’s disclosure Wednesday of its patent pool royalty and pricing terms (see 1507220001) that were multitiered and much more expensive than what the MPEG LA patent pool charges for the use of the HEVC codec. Like the other patent pools that MPEG LA runs, the MPEG LA spokesman said, the goal of its HEVC patent pool “is to incorporate as much essential intellectual property as possible under one license for the benefit of the marketplace.” Participating licensees and patent holders “are required for a pool license to be widely accepted,” and to “achieve wide acceptance, both must receive value,” the MPEG LA spokesman said. “Patent holders must receive value in order to be willing to make their valuable intellectual property widely available under a pool license, and licensees must receive value in order to be willing to pay for its use.” MPEG LA manages licensing programs with 10,000 patents in 80 countries with 200 patent holders and 6,000 licensees, the representative said.

Nintendo didn't infringe on a patent held and asserted by Quintal Research Group, a U.S. District judge in Oakland, California, ruled. Quintal's infringement claim alleges the disputed patent addresses the positioning of buttons and controls on several of Nintendo's handheld gaming devices. Friday, Judge Saundra Armstrong granted Nintendo's request for summary judgment, saying Quintal failed to sufficiently prove the alleged infringement. “The result in this case continues to prove that Nintendo will vigorously defend its innovations against patent lawsuits and will not pay to settle cases simply to avoid litigation," Nintendo General Counsel Devon Pritchard said in a statement. Quintal didn't comment.

The U.K. IP Office sought comment by Aug. 17 on a proposal to raise the maximum penalty for online copyright infringement at a 10-year prison sentence. The proposal would equalize the penalty for online infringement with the current maximum penalty for physical infringement; the current maximum penalty for online infringement stands at a two-year sentence. U.K. government officials have been exploring raising the penalty for online infringement since 2005, with a 2006 independent review of the nation’s IP laws recommending equalizing the sentences because “the intention and impact of physical and online infringement are the same.” The maximum fine for online infringement has steadily increased since 2005 and is now open-ended. Increasing the possible prison sentence for online infringement would “have a deterrent effect on criminals seeking to make money in this way,” the IP Office said Friday.

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) member nations and nongovernmental organizations should strengthen IP rights in all new and existing treaties, said a coalition of 85 free market-oriented groups Monday in a joint letter to WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. The letter, organized by Americans for Tax Reform affiliate Property Right Alliance (PRA), urges the European Commission, WIPO, other intergovernmental organizations and NGOs to protect IP rights in all trade agreements, protect IP rights on the Internet and enhance IP rights as a tool to promote free markets. “Advanced societies have long understood that by protecting the proprietary rights of artists, authors, entrepreneurs, innovators, and inventors, they were promoting the greater public welfare,” the PRA-led coalition said in the letter. “The continued protection of these fundamental rights is essential to global innovation, creativity and competitiveness.” The coalition wants the letter to “encourage the leaders of international organizations and governments to work together to promote the rule of law and protect strong IP rights as the engine of fair, prosperous and transparent societies,” PRA Executive Director Lorenzo Montanari said in a statement. “Ensuring that intellectual property rights are respected and protected in every nation will promote prosperity, innovation and creativity around the globe.”

Google released an updated version of its Google Patents tool, a company blog post said Thursday. The revised search tool contains an updated classification tool, using cooperative patent classification codes to classify everything found in Google Scholar, the company said. It said that Google Patents now contains a simplified user interface and the option to search for foreign patent documents using English keywords.

Abuse of the patent litigation system by patent assertion entities (PAEs) “is the most significant problem facing the patent system and innovation more generally,” Mark MacCarthy, vice president-public policy at the Software & Information Industry Association, wrote to House leadership Thursday urging support for the Innovation Act (HR-9). “Patent trolls do not innovate, make or sell anything, but exist simply to buy patents from others for the sole purpose of suing legitimate businesses of all sizes and kinds for alleged patent infringement, leveraging the very high cost of defending against such lawsuits to obtain ‘hold up’ settlements,” MacCarthy said. "Action needs to be taken now to stop these abusive tactics.” MacCarthy cautioned lawmakers not to be taken in by “a hail-Mary mudslinging campaign” mounted by HR-9 opponents and “designed to obfuscate the purpose and effect of the Innovation Act.” Statements in that campaign that “China loves” HR-9 or that “inventors fear it” are “nothing more than scare tactics from groups that have no substantively compelling arguments on which to base their opposition,” he said. An American Conservative Union-led ad blitz launched last Monday through Washington-area newspapers urged defeat of HR-9 on the grounds it will harm American inventors and small businesses.

Chairmen and executives from the nation's largest Internet companies, including Google, Etsy, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Yahoo, submitted a joint letter Thursday to House leadership urging the passage of the Innovation Act (HR-9). "As inventors ourselves, we support the Innovation Act because it strikes a reasonable compromise between protecting patent holders' rights and removing the threat of frivolous patent troll litigation," the letter said. The reforms in HR-9 are "not silver bullets," the letter said, but they "help remove factors that make the patent troll business model a no-risk, high-reward enterprise. The Innovation Act is a positive step in the right direction for our economy."