Responses are due Oct. 27 to revelations by U.S. District Judge William Conley in Madison, Wisconsin, that he owned Apple stock when presiding over Nokia-Apple patent litigation more than a decade ago, said a letter posted Monday in docket 3:10-cv-00249 and signed by Joel Turner, the court’s deputy chief clerk. Conley contacted Turner to tell him the Apple stock ownership was “brought to his attention,” but that it “neither affected nor impacted his decisions in this case,” said the letter. His ownership of Apple shares would have required his immediate recusal under the code of conduct for federal judges, said Turner: "Judge Conley directed that I notify the parties of the conflict." Court records show the litigation before Conley ended in January 2011 when he granted Apple’s motion, over Nokia's opposition, to transfer the case to U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, for convenience and other judicial reasons. Responses by the Oct. 27 deadline “will be considered” by Chief Judge James Peterson without Conley’s “participation,” said Turner. Attempts to reach Nokia and Apple lawyers Monday were unsuccessful. Conley's chambers didn't respond to questions.
Frontier Communications' requested stay of piracy litigation brought by various music labels (see 2108130033) in U.S. Bankruptcy Court to consolidate a trio of such claims, but only the U.S. District Court in Manhattan can do that, the labels told the Manhattan court in an opposition (in Pacer, docket 21-cv-05050) Friday. They said they were forced to split their claims between U.S. District Court and Bankruptcy Court by the deadline for filing administrative proofs of claim in Frontier's bankruptcy. Frontier counsel didn't comment.
The Copyright Office’s electronic copyright system is mostly back online after a scheduled Aug. 12 “technical upgrade” rendered it unavailable to the public, the CO emailed Friday. “We are experiencing a few technical issues that we are working diligently to resolve.” System users who haven’t logged in during the past 90 days may “experience account reactivation issues,” the CO said.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comments by Oct. 11, rebuttals Oct. 25, identifying online and physical markets it should consider including in its 2021 “notorious markets” report, says Monday’s Federal Register. The annual report lists markets singled out for “substantial copyright piracy or trademark counterfeiting,” said USTR. Its “issue focus” for 2021 “will examine the adverse impact of counterfeiting on workers involved with the manufacture of counterfeit goods,” it said.
The Patent and Trademark Office accepted CTA’s statement of use on the NextGenTV logo as a certification mark for ATSC 3.0-compliant TVs, clearing its final hurdle toward a trademark registration certificate, said an agency notice Tuesday. The certificate “will issue in due course barring any extraordinary circumstances,” said PTO. CTA’s July 1 statement of use said the logo was first deployed commercially “at least as early” as March 2020 (see 2107260021).
Staying flexible to respond to cybersecurity issues is part of Comcast's strategy, said Chief Product and Information Security Officer Noopur Davis. A key question is "how do I build a capability to respond to changes?" she said in Q&A at the Technology Policy Institute conference in Aspen, Colorado. "The threat landscape is literally changing multiple times a day," with many new vulnerabilities, added Davis. And each one "can be exploited numerous different ways," she told TPI Tuesday. Some 100 million devices are in Comcast customer homes, and that's increasing as IoT devices are added, Davis said. "The security of those devices is super important," she continued. "That’s where their digital lives are being conducted," she said of subscribers. In cybersecurity, "we are trying our best, but we are always a few bad luck things away from something bad happening," Davis said. She said when the novel coronavirus began to spread in the U.S. last year and schools moved to virtual learning, some distributed denial of service cyber incidents against schools followed. She called it "the fire alarm of 2020," referring to when students trigger a school alarm to get out of class. Students seeking to launch attacks now "can go buy DDoS attacks as a service," Davis said. She also spoke to TPI about her company's response to T-Mobile's data breach (see 2108170050).
Music label copyright litigation against Frontier Communications (see 2108110011) and related movie company claims brought in U.S. District Court are an attempted "end-run" around U.S. Bankruptcy Court, where the claims originally were filed, Frontier told the U.S. District Court in Manhattan Friday in a motion to stay (in Pacer, docket 21-cv-5050). Citing "basic fairness and efficiency," Frontier said the Manhattan court should stay the complaints pending adjudication of what it said were duplicative claims in Bankruptcy Court. Outside counsel for the music label plaintiffs didn't comment.
Propping up the online pirating of TV shows, movies, games and live events is an estimated $1.34 billion in annual revenue from ads on websites and illicit streaming apps, said a report Thursday by Digital Citizens Alliance and White Bullet. It said website advertising dominates, getting about $1.1 billion of that, though apps appear to be more profitable and are growing rapidly. When combined with subscription revenue, piracy platform operators generate an estimated $2.34 billion revenue annually, it said. The study said major Fortune 500 brands paid pirate operators an estimated $100 million last year, and 25% of ads on piracy apps are from well-known companies. It said big brands have made a concerted effort in the past eight years to stop their ads from showing up on illicit websites.
Lionsgate had a “strong financial quarter” for Starz streaming, “but like the rest of the industry, we were impacted by a reduction in at-home viewership, and importantly a light content quarter, due to COVID-driven production delays,” said CEO Jon Feltheimer on a call Thursday on fiscal Q1 ended June 30. Starz continued growing its base of international subscribers, but U.S. sub numbers took a “temporary” hit that “we have already reversed,” he said. He expects Starz global subscriber growth to “outpace” last year’s, “buttressed by a very strong slate” of content. Starz plans 12 original programs this FY compared with seven last, plus “five tentpole films in the next three quarters will drive a large, large growth of subscriber acquisition,” said Starz CEO Jeffrey Hirsch. “We also saw churn at a historic low.”
ViacomCBS ended Q2 with 42 million streaming subscribers worldwide, and its $982 million in streaming revenue nearly doubled from the same quarter a year ago, it reported the company Thursday. It said Paramount+ was the biggest driver of the 6.5 million new streaming subscribers it added. It said Paramount+ will launch in Australia and New Zealand this month and in European markets including the U.K., Germany, Italy and Ireland in 2022 through a partnership with Comcast's Sky. Total sales were $6.6 billion, up $489 million, with $411 million of the gain due to growing advertising revenue. Licensing revenue, at $1.24 billion, fell $701 million, partly reflecting depressed film licensing due to lack of theatrical releases in 2020 and early 2021, it said. ViacomCBS closed up 7.1% to $41.55.