Members of Congress were urged to enact broad patent reform legislation, in a Tuesday letter signed by 140 startup investors who invested in companies including Dropbox, Facebook, Kickstarter, Instagram, Redfin and Twitter, said an App Developers Alliance and Engine Advocacy news release. Organized by Engine Advocacy and the App Developers Alliance, the letter asks Congress to “support reforms that include increased demand letter transparency” and limit the “scope of expensive litigation discovery,” because patent litigation abuse is a growing problem, the news release said. So-called patent trolls filed 2,791 new lawsuits in 2014, the release said. About 82 percent of patent troll activity targets small- and medium-sized businesses, the release said. “Our Constitution favored a patent system to incentivize innovation and benefit all Americans,” the letter said. “Unfortunately that system has been hijacked by some intent on exploiting Patent Office weakness, and all too frequently it now hinders innovation and chills investment, harming the new companies it was designed to foster and imposing a patent troll tax on new technologies.” The investors asked Congress to pass legislation that would increase transparency, limit the scope of expensive litigation discovery, allow courts to use their discretion to require patent trolls to pay legal fees and other costs incurred by prevailing defendants and to protect end users of technology from being liable for infringements by tech providers, the letter said.
Michelle Lee was sworn in as under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and Patent and Trademark Office director Friday by Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, a Department of Commerce news release said. It said Lee is the first woman to fill the role.
“Patent trolls are crippling growth across all sectors of our innovation economy -- from small businesses to America’s largest companies,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, wrote in a column for Wired Monday. Hatch said he would work with colleagues on “legislation to stop these patent trolls in their tracks” and announced hearings will begin this week “to address this issue.”
Twelve companies, including Bang & Olufsen and Hitachi, have withdrawn from the DVD Copy Control Association, and one company, Azend Group Corp. of Chino, California, joined, DVD CCA told the Justice Department and the FTC in simultaneous “written notifications” Feb. 6. That’s according to a notice in Thursday’s Federal Register by Patricia Brink, director-civil enforcement, in DOJ’s Antitrust Division. The change-of-membership notifications were required to extend DVD CCA antitrust protections under the National Cooperative Research and Production Act of 1993, Brink’s notice said.
Last week’s U.S. Trade Representative Special 301 report on “notorious” IP markets claimed that domain “registrars are required … to take action by locking or suspending domains when they receive a notice about one of their domains facilitating illegal activity,” an Electronic Frontier Foundation blog post said Tuesday. “This isn't true, and by claiming it is, USTR is here repeating the United States entertainment industry's current talking points,” notably those of MPAA and RIAA, it said. ICANN has an agreement with registrars that they should act when “notified of illegal activity,” including piracy and counterfeiting, the report (see 1503050040) said. “On the same day as the Notorious Markets list was published, the RIAA wrote a letter to ICANN claiming that it is not ‘appropriate’ for registrars to deny any obligation to respond to their members' complaints,” EFF said. MPAA, RIAA and USTR didn’t comment.
The “fundamental emphasis” of Monday’s letter to Congress by pro-fair use groups and law experts was “misplaced,” said Free State Foundation President Randolph May in a news release Wednesday. The letter’s signatories included the Computer and Communications Industry Association, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet Association, Internet Infrastructure Coalition and Public Knowledge (see 1503090038). The letter “studiously avoids mentioning ‘property,’ ‘intellectual property,’ or ‘property rights,’” May said. He took aim at the letter’s use of the phrase “public domain,” which it characterized as a “core component of creativity and knowledge.” The "most important attribute of private property is the ability of property owners to exclude others,” May said: “‘Public domain’ is just the opposite.” While "there is a place for a properly delimited public domain, in general, government-mandated ‘free’ access will not encourage creative content, nor will it allow creators to allocate their works in the manner of their choosing or lead to economic benefits for society as a whole,” he said. “We’re not talking about property, because we’re talking about copyright,” Sherwin Siy, PK vice president-legal affairs, said in an interview. “The question of whether or not [copyright] is property is kind of irrelevant when it comes to what the law is,” he said. The letter sought to address the “balance between the holder of the domain and the public,” because there are “values in both private and public property,” Siy said. It’s not a “mischaracterization” to refer to copyright as “regulation,” as May suggested, he said. Copyright is “regulation,” he said. CCIA and EFF didn’t comment.
The Patent and Trademark Office will soon begin its second round of fee-setting, said PTO Deputy Director Michelle Lee in a speech Tuesday. Lee, who was the keynote speaker at the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation luncheon, spoke about the changing landscape of the IP community and continued PTO efforts to work with the IP community to provide the best services possible. Lee also noted that while the agency’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board has performed admirably, the agency has asked the public about possible ways to further improve its operations. Lee said that the agency would soon begin a proposed rulemaking process on possible changes, seeking public input. Lee's nomination to head the office was approved by the Senate Monday (see 1503100031).
The Senate approved, 92-0, Monday night Daniel Marti to be the U.S. intellectual property enforcement coordinator. Six Republican lawmakers didn’t vote, as well as two Democratic members. The chamber also endorsed by voice vote Michelle Lee to be undersecretary of the Commerce Department for intellectual property and director of the Patent and Trademark Office. Immediately following the vote industry groups including the Information Technology Industry Council (see here and here), MPAA (see here and here) and TechNet (see here) issued statements applauding the confirmations.
The International Intellectual Property Alliance applauded the U.S. Trade Representative’s Special out-of-cycle report on “notorious” IP markets. IIPA said in a Friday news release that it welcomed USTR’s inclusion of possible bad IP actors in the domain registrar industry. The report, which USTR released Thursday (see 1503050040), reviews IP protections and other market practices in foreign countries and highlights those nations with the most problematic IP standards, and IIPA filed comments in the review earlier (see 1502060043). USTR’s “listing process works, commanding the attention of marketplace operators and responsible governments,” IIPA Counsel Steven Metalitz said in the release. “This year’s report again mentions markets removed from the list, either because they were shut down by law enforcement, or because the market operators have taken appropriate steps to ensure their market is not used for piracy.”
The issue of some domain registrars allegedly supporting online piracy was highlighted in the U.S. Trade Representative Special 301 out-of-cycle report on “notorious” IP markets. The report, which USTR released Thursday, reviews IP protections and other market practices in foreign countries and highlights those nations with the most problematic IP standards (see 1502060043). ICANN has an agreement with registrars that they should act when “notified of illegal activity,” including piracy and counterfeiting, said the report. “Some registrars, however, reportedly disobey court orders and other communications, including from government enforcement authorities,” said USTR. “Some registrars apparently even advertise to the online community that they will not take action against illicit activity, presumably to incentivize registrations by owners and operators of illicit sites.” The report singled out several infringing websites as particularly problematic, including 4shared.com (British Virgin Islands), Baixeturbo.org (U.K.) and Bajui.com (Canada). “The theft we're shining a light on today is detrimental not only to creators and inventors, but also to consumers, who may be deceived and even endangered by Notorious Markets engaging in counterfeiting and piracy,” said USTR Michael Froman in a separate news release. “The infringing marketplaces listed in the USTR report -- many of which exist online -- undermine this framework that benefits both content creators and consumers,” said MPAA CEO Chris Dodd in a news release. “These notorious markets enable the theft of content on a massive scale, diminishing U.S. competitiveness, discouraging reinvestment from creators, and ultimately harming the consumer experience.” IP groups filed comments earlier this year suggesting which markets should be added to the list (see 1502060043); the Electronic Frontier Foundation slammed the report as “unfair” to foreign countries like Vietnam and Russia (see 1502090037).