CEA, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and eight other groups jointly urged the Department of Justice Monday to require the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC) to abide by the same rules that the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) face in their existing consent decrees. “Without the protections of the consent decrees, licensees would be subject to individual negotiations with potentially hundreds of thousands of licensors, almost all of which possess significant market power over non-substitutable musical works,” the groups said in a letter to Justice. “This would harm all stakeholders involved, including not only consumers, but also the individual songwriters who benefit from the efficient and competitive marketplace that the consent decrees ensure.” The groups also urged Justice to maintain the current ASCAP and BMI consent decrees, saying any weakening in those rules would hurt consumers and artists. SESAC reached a settlement last month with the Radio Music License Committee to end nearly three years of antitrust litigation between the groups (see 1507240049).
Public Knowledge Vice President-Legal Affairs Sherwin Siy agrees with SoundExchange board member David Byrne that the recording industry continues to lack transparency, he said. “In the end, no one knows where all the money goes,” Siy said in a blog post Friday. Byrne raised concerns about transparency issues in the recording industry in an Aug. 2 New York Times opinion article. Individual artists and companies may disclose some information, but “pretty much none of these accounts give their numbers in equivalent values,” Siy said. “You’ll hear about a per-play value here, an aggregate value there, an average in one place, the pennies or millions of outliers in another.” Transparency has been “lacking” in the recording industry because there are incentives not to disclose payment information since sometimes “transparency could make someone look bad, revealing disparate payments that could upset business partners,” Siy said. “Other reasons likely include the perception that the data could be monetized somehow, and that others should be paying for that. And some parties might simply balk at the cost of gathering data they’ve never had to gather before." RIAA had no immediate comment Tuesday.
HEVC Advance and MPEG LA both sidestepped reacting to Cisco’s recent allegations that the formation of those two competing patent pools for one-stop-shop H.265 licensing means “the patent licensing situation for H.265 has recently taken a turn for the worse” (see 1508140051). It was partially on that basis that Cisco said it was helping to lead the charge for a “high quality, next-generation codec that can be used everywhere” and will be royalty-free. Though HEVC Advance CEO Pete Moller didn’t directly take Cisco on for its comments that the H.265 license process has soured, he released a statement in which he said H.265, “just like every codec before it, is working through the IP process.” H.265, as an “industry standard codec, brings together the best technology from a vast number of companies that have committed to license their patents, rather than a proprietary codec for which licensing commitments may or may not be available,” Moller emailed us Tuesday. “The establishment of HEVC Advance furthers the IP process by providing an alternative pool option for many patent owners. We believe the existing patent pools provide a basis to solve the IP process and we encourage patent owners to make their patents available through one of the two existing pools and patent users to support H.265 by becoming licensees and bringing all the benefits of H.265 to the marketplace.” An MPEG LA spokesman declined to comment on Cisco's remarks.
Daniel Marti, the White House Office of Management and Budget’s intellectual property enforcement coordinator, just approved a notice for the Federal Register soliciting feedback on what should go into the 2016 joint strategic plan on IP enforcement, he told attendees of the Technology Policy Institute meeting here in Aspen, Colorado, Monday. “Most if not all” of what went into the administration’s 2013 plan is “evergreen in nature,” Marti said. He anticipates the notice will be posted in the Federal Register in the next week or two, he said. Marti emphasized the interest in collecting data and hopes the 2016 plan continues “to be data-driven,” he said. When considering legacy achievements for his position, Marti mentioned the development of a three-year plan for IP “the deliverable that is most on my mind.”
Limelight Networks infringed on a content delivery patent held by Akamai, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in an en banc opinion Thursday. The Federal Circuit reversed a previous decision saying Limelight wasn't liable for direct infringement. "We are disappointed this outcome isn't aligned with the recent rulings in our favor," Limelight CEO Bob Lento said in a statement: "We will not allow this to distract us from serving our global customers." Limelight will study all options to determine its next steps, it said. "We are extremely pleased with the Federal Circuit's decision," Aaron Ahola, Akamai deputy general counsel, said in a statement. A jury ruled in 2008 that Limelight infringed on the patent, Akamai said, and initially awarded the company more than $45 million in damages.
Cisco is helping to lead the charge for a “high quality, next-generation codec that can be used everywhere” and will be royalty-free, Jonathan Rosenberg, chief technology officer in Cisco’s Collaboration business, said in a blog post. Cisco hatched the effort because “the patent licensing situation for H.265 has recently taken a turn for the worse” with the formation of “two distinct patent licensing pools” that are missing many H.265 license holders among their licensor members, Rosenberg said, referring to MPEG LA and HEVC Advance (see 1507220001). “The total costs to license H.265 from these two pools is up to sixteen times more expensive than H.264, per unit,” he said. The licensing terms of MPEG LA and HEVC Advance “preclude usage of H.265 in any kind of open source or freely distributed software application, such as web browsers” or in “freemium” software products, he said. Though H.265 “is still a good fit for hardware products,” it can’t serve as “a universal video codec across hardware and software,” he said. Code-named “Thor,” Cisco created a new codec development process that “would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents,” he said. “Our efforts are far from complete, but we felt it was time to open this up to the world.” So Cisco “open-sourced” the code, and contributed Thor to the Internet Engineering Task Force, which has begun a standards activity to develop a next-gen royalty free video codec in its NetVC workgroup, he said. “As more technology gets contributed to this cause, the greater its chance of success.” MPEG LA and HEVC Advance representatives didn’t comment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit partially affirmed and partially overturned a 2013 Copyright Royalty Board decision that gave the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and 22 other religious ministries that own copyrights on devotional TV programming 59 percent to 62.86 percent of royalties for cable programming aired between 2000 and 2003. The CRB had ruled that the Independent Producers Group would receive 37.14 percent to 41.02 percent of royalties. The religious ministries had argued that they should receive full royalties on the programming because IPG had no “valid, compensable claims” within the devotional programming category. IPG proposed they receive 37.3 percent to 53.1 percent of royalties. The religious groups objected to IPG’s claim to represent several of the ministries, saying BGEA revoked IPG’s agreements for 2002 and 2003. The three-judge D.C. Circuit panel -- Judges Janice Brown, Brett Kavanaugh and Patricia Millett -- vacated the CRB’s ultimate royalty allocation Friday, ruling it “was arbitrary and capricious” since the royalty judges had rejected the allocations proposed by both the ministries and IPG. “Settling royalty distributions by agreement reflects a separate avenue for resolving royalty distributions under the Copyright Act, subject to its own requirements,” Millett said in the court’s opinion. “In this case, any intersection of the two parties’ numbers was the product of accident, not agreement.” The CRB must now re-examine the royalty allocations, the court ruled. The D.C. Circuit also said, however, the CRB “reasonably determined” that IPG had authority to represent four of the claimant ministries and “reasonably declined” consideration of the ministries’ claim for full royalties. The ministries are generally pleased with the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, said Pillsbury Winthrop lawyer Matthew MacLean, who represented the ministries in the case. The ministries are confident the CRB will re-examine the royalties allocation based on evidence instead of “simply splitting the baby,” MacLean said. The IPG takes issue with the D.C. Circuit’s vacation of the existing CRB royalties allocation because the court appeared to suggest the IPG’s allocation methodology was “100 percent worthless,” said Pick & Boydston lawyer Brian Boydston. The CRB in reality was critical of the IPG methodology but didn’t completely discount it, he said. The D.C. Circuit “could have reached a different decision if it saw it that way,” Boydston said. “I’ll be curious to see what the CRB judges have in mind.”
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.
Western Digital announced the My Passport Cinema storage drive Tuesday, a 4K Ultra HD and high-dynamic-range-ready movie storage device compatible with Vidity-enabled devices. Vidity is the brand name of the secure 4K content platform devised by the Secure Content Storage Association (see 1505200049), with founding members Fox Home Entertainment, SanDisk, Warner Home Entertainment and Western Digital. Samsung, a contributing SCSA member, is bundling the $89 Western Digital drive with its flagship SUHD TVs, models JS9000, JS9100 and JS9500, from Aug. 16 through June 30, “so consumers can enjoy 4K UHD content immediately,” Western Digital and Samsung said. That is only for consumers who bought 2015 Vidity-compliant 4K TVs. A disclaimer on the Western Digital website said: “Exodus: Gods and Kings and The Maze Runner will play in 4K UHD on Samsung 2015 TVs. The Samsung 2014 TVs will only play these two movies in HD.” Eight movies from Fox are preloaded on the device, and consumers get two free with the Samsung promotion. Consumers can unlock the additional movies through purchase: X-Men: Days of the Future Past, The Wolverine, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Fault in Our Stars, Let's Be Cops and The Other Woman. Users can download additional titles via M-GO or other Vidity retailers, said the companies.
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.