The Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) said RightFind XML for Mining, its new text mining application, will allow commercial life science researchers to create full sets of full-text XML articles drawn from more than 4,000 peer-reviewed journals and import them into their preferred text mining software. CCC said the XML for Mining application, part of its RightFind platform, is already integrated with the Linguamatics I2E text mining software. Additional text mining software companies are also planning to integrate their software with the XML for Mining application, CCC said. “The discovery process is enhanced by providing automated access to the many findings that appear in full-text literature, and letting researchers mine content beyond the abstracts,” CCC Chief Technology Officer Babis Marmanis said in a news release. “This saves time, and it can also help reduce costs and mitigate an organization’s copyright infringement risk since all of the content is pre-authorized for commercial text mining.”
Personalized Media Communications completed a patent licensing agreement with Arris. The details of the agreement have been deemed confidential by both parties, said PMC in a Monday news release. PMC said it holds 87 patents and expects to see the issuance of 12 more within a year.
Rovi prevailed in a patent infringement proceeding in Italy, it said Monday. CE companies Card Mania and Italvideo alleged that the Italian portions of two European Rovi patents -- EP 0969662 and EP 1377049 -- are invalid and not infringed. Rovi counterclaimed that the patents are valid and infringed, and the Court of Turin ruled in May that Rovi is entitled to a combined judgment of roughly $1 million. The court had previously asserted the patents valid and infringed by Card Mania and Italvideo.
The U.S. Copyright Office recommended draft legislation in a report released Thursday that included an updated version of the failed Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008, which would have imposed new burdens of proof on an infringing party in copyright infringement lawsuits involving orphan works to avoid legal penalties. Those burdens would include showing that the infringing party conducted a “good faith” search to locate the copyright owner and failed to locate that entity, as well as prove that the infringing use of the copyrighted material cited the copyright owner’s identity, if it was available. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante backed creating a framework for the use of orphan works during a late March House Judiciary Committee hearing on the committee’s Copyright Act review (see 1504290058). Several House Judiciary leaders in the past expressed interest in reviewing the orphan works issue as part of the Copyright Act review (see report in the April 3, 2014, issue). The CO report also recommended the U.S. take a more incremental approach to mass digitization that would allow the U.S. to get additional experience with an extended collective licensing framework that mirrors those used abroad. The CO recommended implementing a pilot program that would allow users to digitize their works and provide access for educational purposes under a joint agreement with user representatives. The CO said it's also issuing a notice of inquiry seeking public comment on the scope and administration of the proposed program.
TechIPm added a patent database for key IoT wireless connectivity standards to its research offerings, the intellectual property consulting firm said Thursday in a blog post. Many market researchers expect interconnected IoT devices to “create a new market that will result in more than $1 trillion in value added to the global economy within 10 years,” the firm said. “Wireless connectivity is the key enabler for the mass deployment of the IoT devices.” More than 3,000 patents owned by more than 160 assignees “are identified as the key wireless standard patents for IoT connectivity,” it said. The combined IP holdings of LG, Qualcomm and Samsung account for nearly 30 percent “of the identified key wireless standard patents for the IoT connectivity,” it said. “The patent database for the key IoT wireless connectivity standards can be used for many diverse purposes in the strategic patent management and exploitation such as competitive intelligence, M&A strategy, IP financing, open innovation and monetization.”
U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez let Flo & Eddie's lawsuit in Los Angeles against SiriusXM move forward Wednesday as a class action. Flo & Eddie, which owns the copyright to The Turtles' "Happy Together" and the rest of that band's music library, claims SiriusXM failed to pay royalties to the company for all of The Turtles' pre-1972 songs. Gutierrez previously found SiriusXM liable in September for royalties on The Turtles' pre-1972 recordings (see report in the Sept. 24, 2014, issue), but Flo & Eddie had sought a class-action suit in March against SiriusXM to allow other bands to seek royalties on pre-1972 recordings. SiriusXM had opposed class certification because it would be difficult to accurately determine royalties for each band that joined the suit. Gutierrez ruled Wednesday that "a class action is superior to individual litigation to the fair and efficient adjudication of the present controversy” given “SiriusXM’s aggressive litigation tactics thus far, its public statements about intent to appeal adverse decisions, and its decision to continue to perform pre-1972 recordings without authorization.” Sirius XM “treats every single owner of a pre-1972 song the same, namely it doesn't pay them, so it was appropriate for this court to grant class certification,” said Flo & Eddie lawyer Henry Gradstein in a statement. Sirius XM didn’t comment.
Apple landed a U.S. patent Tuesday for a “fusion keyboard” featuring “individually depressible mechanical keys having a touch sensitive area located on their surface,” Patent and Trademark Office records for patent number 9,041,652 show. “One or more of the depressible mechanical keys can be multi-purpose keys capable of being depressed to multiple levels,” says the patent, which was applied for in September 2011 listing John Elias, of Townsend, Delaware, and Steven Martisauskas, of San Francisco, as the inventors. Under the invention, the touch-sensitive mechanical keyboard “can receive key depression input, touch event input, or combinations thereof at the same time,” the patent says. The keyboard can “further include a processor for distinguishing detected touch events from detected key depressions,” it says. “The processor can generate a key depression command or a touch event command in response to the detected touch events and key depressions.” Apple representatives didn’t comment.
The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) filed a copyright infringement lawsuit Wednesday against Wolfgang's Vault over claims that the company illegally transmitted concert video and audio recordings via its websites and YouTube. Wolfgang's Vault, whose websites include ConcertVault.com and MusicVault.com, refers to itself as the “largest collection of live audio and video recordings online.” NMPA's complaint, filed with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, is seeking an end to Wolfgang's Vault's unlicensed use of the recordings and restitution for their past use, the complaint says. NMPA estimates that Wolfgang's Vault receives about 50,000 visitors per day. “Systematic copyright infringement cannot be a business model, and it is unfortunate that Wolfgang’s Vault chose not to compensate all of the creators responsible for their content,” NMPA President David Israelite said in a news release. “Hopefully, this lawsuit will bring publishers and many iconic songwriters the revenue they deserve for the use of their music.” Wolfgang's Vault didn't comment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit dealt a blow Tuesday to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) lawsuit against the Radiance Foundation over that group’s 2013 transformation of the NAACP acronym into the “National Association for the Abortion of Colored People” in an anti-abortion column, vacating and remanding U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson’s original June 2014 decision in the case. Jackson had ruled in Norfolk, Virginia, that the Radiance Foundation’s use of the NAACP acronym constituted trademark infringement. The 4th Circuit said the NAACP’s interpretation of trademark law “would push the Lanham Act close against a First Amendment wall, which is incompatible with the statute’s purpose and stretches the text beyond its breaking point. We decline to reach so far.” Allowing an “in connection” element “to suck in speech on political and social issues through some strained or tangential association with a commercial or transactional activity” would be dangerous, the 4th Circuit said. “Courts have uniformly understood that imposing liability under the Lanham Act for such speech is rife with the First Amendment problems.” Radiance applauded the ruling, saying in a statement that “the NAACP tried to crush our right to free speech but truth and justice prevailed.” The NAACP didn’t immediately comment. The Electronic Frontier Foundation praised the decision Tuesday, with Legal Fellow Jamie Williams saying in a blog post that the 4th Circuit “recognized that trademark protection ‘comes at a potential cost to free expression’ and found that trademark law should be read narrowly in cases involving non-commercial speech.”
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals en banc ruling against requiring Google remove the controversial anti-Islam video Innocence of Muslims from YouTube (see 1505180063) “artificially shrunk” U.S. copyright rights “by deciding that actors do not have copyright interests in their own dramatic performances,” said The Armenta Law Firm in a news release Monday. Armenta is one of the firms representing actress Cindy Lee Garcia in her request for a mandatory preliminary takedown of the video, which Garcia claims she was falsely lured into briefly appearing in. The 9th Circuit's en banc ruling reversed an earlier ruling by three of the circuit's judges that allowed for the video's takedown (see report in the March 3, 2014, issue). The en banc ruling “short changes the threats” Garcia has received since the video first appeared online in 2012 and didn't address Garcia's “First Amendment right to be free of the speech crudely dubbed over her performance,” Armenta said. Google has “long believed that the previous ruling was a misapplication of copyright law,” said a spokesman. “We're pleased with this latest ruling.”