Carriers’ unlocking principles were “only recently fully implemented,” making it “difficult to quantify with certainty what effect they have had on the number of complaints on unlocking the Commission receives, but I share your goal of understanding whether each of the principles increases consumer choice and promotes competition,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., in a March 26 letter released Tuesday. “We will closely monitor and assess the effect of implementation over the next year.” CTIA released the voluntary principles in December 2013.
The Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force’s report Tuesday on Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice-and-takedown processes identified a series of good, bad and situational practices to improve the efficiency and handling of the DMCA notices for both senders and recipients. The IPTF said its multistakeholder forum on the DMCA processes, which began meeting in March 2014, considered a broad range of issues that it could solve without the need for new legislation. Good practices include writing DMCA takedown notices in easily understandable “plain English” language and implementing efficient processes, the IPTF said in the report. Bad practices include obfuscating the DMCA takedown process by hiding contact information or DMCA takedown web forms behind multiple click-through ads, the IPTF said. Trusted submitter programs can result in the submission of accurate information while also creating an efficient process, while security measures like CAPTCHA codes can help service providers to offer online DMCA submission mechanisms at the same time they protect websites against attacks, the IPTF said. “The group’s agreement on a set of good and bad practices shows that progress can be made in this area, and should be especially helpful for small businesses and individuals with less experience operating within the system,” Shira Perlmutter, Patent and Trademark Office chief policy officer and director-international affairs, said in a news release.
Congress’ ongoing examination of whether to make the U.S. Copyright Office an agency independent of the Library of Congress continues to raise questions over how the Copyright Office would function, given the potential for the agency to then become a rulemaking body, Wilkinson Barker lawyer David Oxenford said in a blog post Monday. The Copyright Office’s recommendations are currently only recommendations to Congress on changes to copyright law rather than true rulemakings because the Library of Congress “technically reports to Congress, not the President, and thus the arguments are that the Library is not a true executive agency (though the President does appoint the Librarian of Congress),” Oxenford said in the blog post. If the Copyright Office became an independent agency, “Congress would not need to get involved in details of Copyright law changes, but instead could enact a broader statute and let the Copyright Office fill in the details, just as the FCC decides how to enforce the Communications Act,” Oxenford said. Congress is seeking ways to increase its oversight of the FCC, which Oxenford said raises the question, “Is Congress ... ready to give up that same kind of oversight over Copyright policy?”
Biometric authentication company NXT-ID filed provisional patent 62/143028 for a method and system to perform wireless payments via near field communications in a mobile device, it said Monday. The patent covers miniature antenna modules for uses including radio frequency and magnetic stripe communications, energy transfer and charging, and wireless magnetic payments, the company said. The miniature antenna modules are small enough to fit in mobile and wearable devices, including smart watches, but powerful enough to transmit wirelessly to magnetic stripe readers, David Tunnell, NXT-ID chief technology officer, said. Users can position the antenna-equipped devices within a few inches of most magnetic strip readers to transmit magnetic stripe data wirelessly, “at a fraction of the power consumption of other approaches,” Tunnell said. A key challenge with dynamic magnetic stripe technology has been to get it to work across all magnetic stripe readers, not just some, and NXT-ID’s multipurpose antenna technology has overcome that limitation, Tunnel said.
A recently leaked portion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership purports to show provisions that would “enable multinational corporations to undermine public interest rules through an international tribunal process called investor state dispute settlement (ISDS),” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog post Wednesday. The authenticity of the leaked documents couldn't be independently confirmed. “Under this process, foreign companies can challenge any new law or government action at the federal, state, or local level, in a country that is a signatory to the agreement,” it said. That has implications for intellectual property, EFF said. The leaked text said the provisions don't "apply to copyright and patent rules as long as those rules are 'consistent with' the TPP's Intellectual Property Chapter" and the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement, said EFF. "This means that the agreement gives the ISDS court the ability to interpret national compliance with the provisions of the TPP, a dangerous proposition given the partisan nature of the ISDS courts."
The Copyright Office posted the second round of comments filed in connection with the CO's sixth triennial rulemaking process for Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 1201, which prohibits the circumvention of technological protection measures. The comments, which were due Friday, were limited to parties opposed to some of the office's proposed exemptions (see 1503300053). The Software and Information Industry Association opposed the proposed exemption for the circumvention of electronic literary works to allow for the noncommercial use via “space-shifting or format-shifting.” The Software Alliance opposed the exemption for the jailbreaking of cellphones. Comments in favor of the exemptions were due Feb. 6 (see 1502110062). Comments by those who support or oppose specific proposals and neutral parties wishing to reply to other comments are due May 1.
The Copyright Office is "struggling to keep up" with the pace of technological change in the copyright industry, said Michi Iljazi, Taxpayers Protection Alliance communications and policy manager, in a Hill op-ed Thursday. “The question isn’t whether the Copyright Office should be fixed, it is how the US Copyright Office can make needed changes to be fully capable of dealing with the creative forces that are driving today’s knowledge based economy.” That’s not a “herculean task,” but a matter of “updating their IT systems and optimizing the technology,” Iljazi said. He added that the CO should have “greater independence” from the Library of Congress: “This arrangement may have outlived its usefulness.”
Comments on copyright royalty judges' proposed regulations for rates and terms of digital performances of sound recordings and ephemeral recordings to facilitate such transmissions are due April 16, said a Copyright Royalty Board notice in Thursday's Federal Register. The rates and terms are for Jan. 1, 2016, through Dec. 31, 2020, it said.
An independent license administration company, HEVC Advance, wants to start a one-stop-shop patent pool for the HEVC platform, the company said in a Thursday announcement. The HEVC Advance patent pool "will address marketplace demand for an additional licensing option of HEVC essential patents," the company said. It expects to attract a "critical mass" of HEVC patent holders, with more than 500 "essential patents" to be available for license at launch, and the number of patents expected to grow significantly soon thereafter, it said. It named Dolby Labs, General Electric, Mitsubishi, Philips and Technicolor as likely to be on "the initial list of licensors." Royalty rates and licensing terms will be made available in Q2 in preparation for a formal launch in Q3, it said. The announcement would appear to put HEVC Advance in competition with MPEG LA, which runs an HEVC license program as a one-stop shop for about two dozen companies and universities that hold HEVC-related patents, including Apple, Fujitsu, Hitachi Maxell, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung and Siemens. Last week, MPEG LA said it updated coverage of its HEVC patent portfolio to reflect recent ITU revisions in the HEVC standard (see 1503190037).
Replicator Encore Media Services and several adult DVD distributors and the individuals who run them are producing and marketing DVDs without a license from the DVDC6 one-stop-shop patent pool, alleged a patent infringement complaint. It alleged violations of eight DVD patents, two each held by Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Sanyo and Warner Home Entertainment, on behalf of themselves and the rest of the nine DVD6C members. Also named as defendants are Barracuda Entertainment, Caballero Video, Davenport International, DVD Factory, Max Morris Enterprises, M. Morris Inc., Rodax Distributors, 6480 Corp. and the individuals Daniel Mamane, Gerold Pool and Tomer Yoffe. Representatives of the defendants didn’t comment on the suit, which was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Hitachi, JVC Kenwood, Samsung, Sharp and Toshiba also are DVD6C members. Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Sanyo and Warner filed a nearly identical April complaint against World Media Group. It was settled in September, terms undisclosed, court documents show. Defendants Caballero, Rodax and M. Morris Inc. and their principals Mamane and Yoffe last got legal notoriety in 2012 when Ben & Jerry’s won an injunction against them in U.S. District Court in Manhattan for marketing adult DVDs that played on familiar names of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors and bore logos that were nearly “identical” to the real thing, said the ice cream maker's complaint. The defendants signed a consent judgment in July 2013 agreeing to various sanctions, including an order pulling all the offending DVDs from the shelves.