The Patent and Trademark Office remains “open to making whatever changes are necessary to ensure the [Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)] trials are as effective and as fair as possible, provided those changes fall within our congressional mandate,” said PTO Director Michelle Lee during a Federal Circuit Judicial Conference event Monday. PTO issued revised PTAB rules earlier this month (see 1604010064) after voluntarily using a rulemaking process that included public comment, Lee said in prepared remarks. “The process we followed here is an excellent example of how we are never satisfied with the status quo, we are always looking for ways to improve, and we listen carefully to public input.” The revised rules allow PTAB to continue using a strict standard for re-examining most patents. Other revisions included allowing patent owners to file new evidence in opposition to a challenge and a rule requiring petitioning parties to prove they are not trying to abuse the PTAB system.
Despite claims by defendants Hawaiian Telcom, Time Warner Cable and its Oceanic Time Warner Cable subsidiary to the contrary, Broadband iTV's patent "is more than merely automatizing a pre-existing manual process of hand-delivering tapes with handwritten notes to generate a VOD system," Broadband iTV said in a reply brief (in Pacer) filed Wednesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In its brief for its appeal of a 2015 ruling by a U.S. District Court in Honolulu, Broadband said the defendants and the Honolulu court refuse to recognize the patent, misstate the law on patent eligibility and misapply the two-step analysis laid out in Alice Corp. vs. CLS Bank. Broadband iTV sued in 2014, alleging the defendants were violating its patent on conversion, navigation and display of video content in their digital TV services, including VOD. Hawaiian Telcom and TWC didn't comment Thursday.
MPAA and the National Federation of the Blind jointly called on the Senate to ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization's Marrakech Treaty on improving access to published works for the blind and otherwise print disabled. The treaty “provides a strong example of how nations and stakeholders can work together to improve access for the blind and those otherwise print disabled, while also remaining consistent with existing international copyright norms,” said MPAA CEO Chris Dodd and NFB President Mark Riccobono in a joint statement. “The agreement will have substantial benefits for blind and print disabled individuals, who will gain vastly increased access to the world's published works.” The treaty “strikes a meaningful balance that came about through collective action by a wide range of parties and the WIPO countries themselves,” Dodd and Riccobono said Tuesday.
Ambiguous legal standards and some copyright owners' aggressive practices are “undermining” the effectiveness of the safe harbor provision contained in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Section 512, particularly as it applies to small and medium-sized ISPs, the American Cable Association told the Copyright Office in comments released Tuesday. The CO received a mixed bag of more than 91,000 comments on its ongoing Section 512 study, which is assessing the effectiveness of the safe harbors and the existing notice-and-takedown process (see 1604010057 and 1604040051). ISPs are struggling to determine how to interpret the requirement that entities covered by the conduit safe harbor adopt and implement a policy to terminate Internet access of customers who are “repeat infringers,” ACA commented. Members are receiving an increasing number of takedown notices each day because of automated infringement detection technology, and dealing with the increasing number of notices has become burdensome, ACA said. To improve the conduit safe harbor, ACA recommended requiring copyright owners follow a standard takedown notice format and also suggested adopting guidelines that will distinguish between innocent and willful infringement.
The Patent and Trademark Office issued final changes Friday to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's rules, allowing PTAB to continue to use a strict standard for re-examining most patents. PTAB will use a different standard -- the one used by federal district courts -- in cases where a patent would expire while the board is evaluating patent re-examination, PTO said in a notice in the Federal Register. The revised PTAB rules also will allow patent owners to file new evidence in opposition to a challenge and will require petitioning parties to prove they're not trying to abuse the PTAB system, the PTO said. The office said it won't continue a pilot program in which only one PTAB judge would evaluate whether to take up a patent re-examination case “after receiving negative responses” from stakeholders.
Application of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Section 512 safe harbor provisions and the proliferation of legal online content services is an indication “the content industry is winning” its fight against online piracy, the Internet Association said Tuesday in a blog post. Notice-and-takedown requests under Section 512 are steadily increasing and more than 60,000 online services now participate in the system, the IA said. “What's more, Internet companies have implemented technological solutions beyond the requirements of the law that make it easier than ever for copyright holders to combat online infringement,” the IA said. The proliferation of online content services has reversed the use of BitTorrent platforms, whose traffic now “has dropped to single digits” in overall Internet viewing percentage, the IA said. Netflix and YouTube now generate 50 percent of online traffic during primetime traffic hours, the IA said.
The U.S. Copyright Office said it plans a series of May roundtables in Washington and San Francisco on its studies on software-embedded consumer products and Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 1201. Stakeholders were divided in February on how the CO should do its software-embedded products study and particularly on whether there's already a need to change copyright law to suit such products (see 1602170054). Several stakeholders have partially set their sights on the CO's proposal within the Section 1201 study to adjust the CO's triennial review process for Section 1201 exemptions to allow for presumptive renewal of previously granted exemptions (see 1603030060). The CO set roundtables on the software-embedded products study for May 18 in Washington and May 24 in San Francisco. The CO's Section 1201 roundtables will be May 19-20 in Washington and May 25-26 in San Francisco. All Washington-based roundtables will be at the Library of Congress' Madison Building, while San Francisco-based roundtables will be at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, the CO said in a Monday notice in the Federal Register. The CO also plans roundtables on their DMCA Section 512 study May 2-3 at the New York University School of Law and May 12-13 at Stanford Law School (see 1603180059).
The European Commission opened a public consultation Wednesday as part of its planned update of EU copyright rules, focusing on the role of publishers in the “copyright value chain.” The public consultation will in part explore whether to extend neighboring rights to publishers, which don’t currently benefit from such rights. Neighboring rights are similar to copyright but pertain only to performances of a copyrighted work by a performer or the production of a copyrighted work. The EC said it’s also consulting on the “panorama exception” -- peoples’ use of images depicting buildings, public monuments and publicly displayed sculptures. Comments on the consultation are due June 15, the EC said. The Computer and Communications Industry Association said it will further analyze the issues involved but praised the EC for “offering this consultation and its willingness to listen to all stakeholders.” European copyright laws “should reflect the symbiotic relationship between publishers, and technology, as well as citizens’ freedom to access information and publish their own material online,” said CCIA Vice President James Waterworth in a news release. “Such an approach will benefit consumers and overall economic growth.”
While music sales have been "skyrocketing," revenue for creators isn't keeping pace, wrote RIAA Chairman Cary Sherman in a blog post Tuesday. In 2015, consumers listened to "hundreds of billions of audio and music streams through on-demand ad-supported digital services like YouTube," but he said revenue has been "meager" and the problem is worsening. Sherman said major technology companies, which he didn't identify, are essentially usurping the revenue that should go to music creators by taking advantage of "outdated, market-distorting government rules and regulations that either pay below fair-market rates, or avoid paying for that music altogether." Sherman cited the exemption AM/FM broadcasters get from paying artists and labels, satellite's below-market rate standard, "and the hopelessly outdated 'notice and takedown' provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which many services have distorted to rake in billions of dollars of revenue on the backs of artists, songwriters and labels." RIAA reported that in 2015, for the first year ever, streaming was the largest component of music revenue, at 34 percent of the market and slightly higher than downloads. Total recorded-music revenue rose 0.9 percent to $7 billion from the prior year, and "continued growth of revenues from streaming services offset declines in sales of digital downloads and physical product," RIAA said.
The Copyright Office said it plans two public roundtables in May on its study of Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512's safe harbor provisions. The CO announced the Section 512 study in December (see 1512300039) and is collecting public comments on the parameters of the study through April 1. One two-day roundtable will be May 2-3 at the New York University School of Law, and the other May 12-13 at Stanford Law School, the CO said in Friday's Federal Register. The NYU roundtable will run 9 a.m.-5 p.m. both days in Furman Hall's Pollack Colloquium Room, the CO said. The Stanford roundtable will run 9 a.m.-5 p.m. both days in the school's Manning Faculty Lounge, the CO said.