MPEG LA is offering a royalty software waiver and discount to boost adoption of Versatile Video Coding (VVC), introduced in January, it said Monday. MPEG LA hopes to bring the license “into conformity with market realities,” it said. The measure waives royalties for stand-alone VVC software products sold to end users, while assuring all licensees will be covered under patents that those licensees may own, a spokesperson emailed, saying there's virtually no market adoption so far. “Investments in new e-commerce and advertiser supported services that utilize standalone software will lead the adoption of next generation video and these initiatives will accommodate it,” said MPEG LA CEO Larry Horn. MPEG LA “respects that decisions to adopt new video standards are for the market to make based on technical, economic and other factors,” Horn said. “The market doesn’t build business models around licensing terms,” he said, but to “generate new products that enhance the quality of life, and licensing terms must work in concert with rather than as an obstacle to their adoption.” A 25% royalty discount is available to any VVC licensee that's compliant with MPEG LA’s AVC, HEVC and VVC patent portfolio licenses, it said.
A jury in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in Austin awarded $46.77 million in statutory damages Thursday to several record labels for the willful contributory infringement by internet service provider Grande Communications Networks of 1,403 copyrighted works, a verdict form shows (docket l:17-cv-00365). The labels sued Grande in April 2017, alleging its internet customers had engaged in more than 1 million infringements of copyrighted works over BitTorrent systems, including tens of thousands of “blatant infringements by repeat infringers.” The lawsuit alleged Grande turned a blind eye to the wrongdoing, refusing to take “any meaningful action to discourage this continuing theft, let alone suspend or terminate subscribers who repeatedly commit copyright infringement through its network.” Grande didn’t respond Friday to requests for comment.
Amazon Prime Video, plus “various generations and screen sizes” of Amazon Fire and Echo Show devices, continue to infringe five DivX patents on adaptive bitrate streaming and digital rights management, alleged Divx in a complaint Monday (docket 3:22-cv-00687) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia in Alexandria. “Without discovery, DivX cannot exhaustively identify all Amazon devices” that infringe the asserted patents, it said. Amazon provides an app store and associated infrastructure “to enable streaming service providers to provide their Amazon device-specific streaming applications to end users, so that such end users can download, install, and use such streaming applications” using the Amazon accused products, it said. Amazon didn’t comment.
The Motion Picture Association, on behalf of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, served five Digital Millennium Copyright Act subpoenas Thursday on content delivery network Cloudflare and Tonic, a national domain name registry, court records show. The subpoenas, requested through the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, order the companies to produce the identities of individuals affiliated with websites in their spheres believed to have “exploited” ACE members’ “exclusive rights in their copyrighted motion pictures without their authorization,” said a declaration (docket 2:22-mc-00197) in support of the petitions by Jan van Voorn, MPA executive vice president and chief-global content protection. ACE “is a global coalition of leading content creators and on-demand entertainment services committed to supporting the legal marketplace for video content and addressing the challenge of online piracy,” said van Voorn’s declaration. ACE members include the five major studios, plus Amazon and Netflix. Cloudflare and Tonic didn’t respond Tuesday to requests for comment.
The major Hollywood studios plus Netflix moved Monday for a default judgment in their Dec. 1 copyright infringement lawsuit against PrimeWire, seeking $20.7 million in “maximum statutory damages,” plus the recovery of $417,000 in attorneys’ fees. PrimeWire is “relentless” in its “commercial scale piracy,” said a motion (docket 2:21-cv-09317) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles. PrimeWire “sought to avoid accountability,” it said. The court gave the PrimeWire defendants “every opportunity to appear and defend their conduct,” but they “deliberately refused to identify themselves or appear, instead hiding behind anonymous emails,” it said. PrimeWire forced the studios “to engage in third-party discovery regarding damages, only to encounter intermediaries and shell companies designed to hide the actual profits that the Defendants gained from their illegal conduct,” it said. The studios’ investigation found the PrimeWire defendants “have connections to money-laundering schemes and other infringing enterprises, further underscoring the willfulness and scale of their infringement.” Efforts to reach PrimeWire for comment were unsuccessful Tuesday.
Music labels alleging Frontier Communications has turned a blind eye to copyright infringement by its internet subscribers (see 2108130033) asked the U.S. District Court in Manhattan to lift an 8-month-old stay on their complaint. In a docket 1:21-cv-05050 motion to lift the stay Monday, they said the stay was to allow for quicker resolution of related claims brought in Frontier's bankruptcy, but that isn't happening. Frontier counsel didn't comment.
Sony Group in Tokyo requested and was granted Thursday a 90-day extension to Jan. 18 “to oppose for good cause” an application to trademark a Sonyeea line of dog beds and kennels, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board records show. The application, filed by Baobei Yan of Fujian Province, China, was published Sept. 20 and the 30-day opposition window closes Oct. 20. Sony needs “additional time to investigate” the Sonyeea claim and to confer with counsel before filing a notice of opposition, said its request.
Digital identity verification platform Averon entered a motion Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, seeking leave to file a complaint under seal alleging AT&T and mobile sign-on app ZenKey “misappropriated” Averon’s trade secrets, said court papers in docket 1:22-cv-01341. Averon’s complaint and exhibits contain “confidential and proprietary information that Averon seeks to protect,” plus the defendants’ “alleged” confidential information that Averon also seeks to protect, said the motion. AT&T and ZenKey didn’t comment Wednesday.
Beijing-based Sailed Technology filed a "renewed" application Thursday (docket 2:22-cv-01396) in U.S. District Court in Seattle for an order granting it permission to serve subpoenas on Amazon for deposition testimony and documents connected with a case brought in an intellectual property court in Nanjing, China, in which Amazon Echo and Fire products are alleged to have infringed one or more Sailed patents. Sailed's subpoena request is "no longer an ex parte application," it said. Chinese courts lack the discovery processes common to courts in the U.S., “and the instant application provides the only means by which Sailed can obtain the information sought,” it said. Sailed seeks “limited discovery” from Amazon about the manufacture and sales of Amazon products at issue in the Chinese court, including the identity of the “Chinese entities that manufacture, distribute, and export the accused Amazon products,” said the application. Amazon is due to file an opposition by Oct. 17, and Sailed’s reply is due Oct. 21, it said. The renewed application was filed on Sailed’s behalf by Carmen Bremer of the Bremer Law Group in Seattle, but in recent days, Sailed has brought on James Canfield, Emma Baratta, James Klaiber and Lynn Russo with Hughes Hubbard in New York to handle the case. Four attorneys with Fenwick & West are representing Amazon.
The U.S. District Court in Seattle assigned civil action docket 2:22-cv-01396 to a Sept. 16 ex parte application from Chinese company Sailed Technology for court authority to serve deposition and discovery subpoenas on Amazon for alleged patent infringement (see 2209300040). Amazon opposes the application on grounds that Sailed “seeks highly invasive and confidential discovery without providing Amazon with an opportunity to respond and correct the record,” it said in a Sept. 28 motion to deny. The case was reassigned Friday to U.S. District Judge John Chun, said a text entry in the docket.