Public interest groups said they're pleased with the bipartisan support for patent reform legislation moving in House and Senate committees. During a panel Wednesday held by Public Knowledge, representatives from groups pushing for increased consumer protection from patent litigation said the support for litigation protection is across the board. There "couldn't be more support for this," said Chris Armstrong, Small Business Majority director-partnership and government affairs. Armstrong also said research by the group that represents small-business owners showed most individuals polled support increased restrictions on so-called patent trolls and on patent litigation. Charles Duan, Public Knowledge Patent Reform Project director, said patent litigation and patent demand letters have had a significant impact on the small-business sector, especially in the area of investor confidence. Duan referred to research that he said showed 75 percent of venture capital firms would be less inclined to invest in a business that has been sent a patent demand letter or threatened by a patent assertion entity (PAE). Duan also said consumers of certain products, particularly from the tech and communications sector, also are being affected by patents trolls and PAEs. As the Senate Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship Act (S-1137) and the House Innovation Act (HR-9) -- both targeted primarily at reducing lawsuits and threats issued by PAEs and increasing consumer security -- work their way through their respective chambers, Duan, Armstrong and others said open dialogue with those affected by the patent suits and advocacy should continue to help members of Congress find the best ways to resolve many of the issues allegedly caused by increased patent litigation.
Hyper-local and indoor positioning services firm sensewhere secured patents in China and the U.S., a company news release said Wednesday. The patent issued by the Patent and Trademark Office is for a method by which a singular device can "assist another device to obtain a position fix," sensewhere said. The patent issued by the Chinese government differs from the U.S. patent in that it covers a method to map wireless access points by using location references from a user device, the company said.
Three multichannel video programming distributors settled DVR-related patent infringement cases brought by the same firm, Custom Media Technologies. Custom Media sued eight companies in August 2013 in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, alleging that the defendants were violating Custom Media's patent for a “Method and System For Customizing and Distributing Presentations For User Sites.” The 17-year-old patent involves distributing video, audio and text over various networks -- such as the Internet, satellite or cable systems -- for on-demand use. Cisco -- which manufactures many of the DVRs -- in 2014 sought a Patent and Trademark Office review of the Custom Media-owned patent, but the PTO declined earlier this year. Monday, the suits against DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon were dismissed as court paperwork indicated the companies had resolved Custom Media's claims. A suit against AT&T was settled last week. Terms of those settlements weren't made public. Still outstanding are patent complaints against Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications and Dish Network. None of the involved companies had any comment Tuesday.
Apple bowed amid pressure from singer Taylor Swift and other artists to reverse its royalty payment policy for its Apple Music streaming service. Senior Vice President-Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue said Sunday that the company now plans to pay artists royalties for music streamed during the three-month trial period Apple is offering for the service. Apple Music is to launch June 30, with individual subscriptions costing $9.99 per month and six-user family subscriptions costing $14.99 per month. Apple’s original plan not to pay royalties on music streamed during the trial period was “shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company,” Swift said in a letter posted to her Tumblr Web page before Apple reversed its decision. “Three months is a long time to go unpaid, and it is unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing.” Cue acknowledged Swift’s letter, saying via Twitter that “We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. Love, Apple.” Apple said recently that it would pay 71.5 percent of revenue generated from the service to copyright owners for songs streamed in the U.S. (see 1506150073).
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative removed Paraguay from its 2015 Special 301 Watch List after the U.S. signed an intellectual property rights (IPR) agreement with the country Thursday, USTR said in a statement. The agency plans an out-of-cycle review of Paraguay in the near future, the statement said. USTR released its most recent edition of the Special 301 Report in late April (see 1505010009). Paraguay has "stepped up its efforts to strengthen IPR protection and enforcement" over the past 18 months, said USTR.
The Library of Congress is considering adjusting royalty rates cable systems pay for retransmission of broadcast radio and TV signals, it said in Friday's Federal Register. The royalties are calculated based on the cable system's gross receipts from subscribers who receive the retransmitted broadcast signals, with cable operators lumped into tiers of small, medium and large. The deadline for a petition to participate in the proposed adjustment is July 20.
LG Electronics agreed to license Nokia Technologies smartphone patents, Nokia said in a Tuesday announcement. LG is the latest of more than 60 licensees for Nokia's 2G, 3G and 4G mobile communication technology patents and the first major smartphone manufacturer to join the licensing program since Nokia divested its Devices & Services business to Microsoft in 2014, Nokia said. LG’s “detailed royalty payment obligations” under the license agreement “will be subject to commercial arbitration, expected to conclude within a 1-2 year timeframe,” Nokia said. Other terms weren’t disclosed. LG didn’t comment.
Sunday's season finale of Game of Thrones set a new piracy record, with 1.5 million downloads in eight hours, said piracy news site Torrentfreak, citing data from Demonii Tracker Project. That number was expected to surge to over 10 million over the coming days, it said. The episode also broke the all-time record for the number of people sharing a single file at the same time, which was 224,367 at first post, updated to 258,131 later in the evening. The lower quality 480p copies of the show were “by far” the most popular among downloaders, followed by 720p and 1080p copies, it said. Game of Thrones pirates come from all over the world, but the show is particularly popular in the U.S., UK, Canada and India, it said.
Apple will pay about 71.5 percent of revenue generated from its forthcoming Apple Music service to copyright owners for songs streamed in the U.S. and an average of 73 percent of revenue for songs streamed elsewhere, a spokesman confirmed Monday. Earlier media reports had said Apple would pay copyright owners only 58 percent of revenue for songs streamed in the U.S. The Apple Music service, to launch June 30, will cost $9.99 per month for individual subscriptions and $14.99 per month for a six-user family subscription (see 1506080055).
The application deadline for copyright holders seeking payout of 2013 royalties they're owed by cable companies and satellite carriers is July 6, the Copyright Royalty Board said. The money is collected twice yearly by the Copyright Office for the license to transmit terrestrial TV and radio broadcast signals via cable and satellite. A notice about the deadline and application process for 2013 royalty payments was published in the Federal Register after judges determined "controversies exist" about the distribution, based on previous comments from such organizations as the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Canadian Broadcasting Corp., Motion Picture Association of America, NBA, NFL, Office of the Commissioner of Baseball and PBS. A CRB notice Thursday publicized the June 5 Federal Register notice.