BlackBerry is making “significant progress” in negotiations to sell the portion of its patent portfolio involving mobile devices, messaging and wireless networking -- “areas of business that we are no longer actively involved with,” said CEO John Chen on a call Wednesday for fiscal Q2 ended Aug. 31. BlackBerry and the potential buyer reached preliminary agreement on “many of the key terms,” he said. “We expect to execute a definitive agreement this quarter.” Q2 licensing revenue was only $15 million because patent “monetization activities remain limited while negotiations for the potential sale continue,” said Chief Financial Officer Steve Rai. Neither he nor Chen identified the possible buyer. BlackBerry made the decision five years ago to exit handset development and manufacturing in favor of a royalty-bearing model that licenses the brand and intellectual property to other smartphone makers (see 1609280006). The stock closed 11% higher Thursday at $10.60.

Dish Network is suing an Iraqi streaming service and set-top box maker and a Michigan reseller, claiming the iStar service is infringing on copyright by carrying a variety of international broadcast channels in the U.S. that are exclusively licensed to Dish. In a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit (docket 2:21-cv-12219), Dish said it and the networks sent nearly 70 notices to iStar between March 2016 and the filing of the complaint, and iStar stopped responding in 2019. Defendant reseller Atlas Satellite didn't comment.

Plaintiffs claiming secondary copyright infringement liability by WideOpenWest for movie pirating by its broadband subscribers are "part of a well-known web of copyright trolls" and haven't shown any WOW subscriber committed direct infringement or that WOW had knowledge of alleged infringements, the cable ISP told U.S. District Court in Colorado in a Tuesday motion to dismiss (docket 21-cv-01901, in Pacer). Outside counsel for plaintiffs 211 Productions and others didn't comment.

Innovators like Sonos “should be able to trust the courts” to protect their intellectual property from companies like Google “that attempt to free-ride” off its “high-quality engineering and hard work,” six Grammy- and Oscar-winning sound engineers and producers told the International Trade Commission Monday in docket 337-TA-1191 (login required). Google violated Section 337 of the 1930 Tariff Act for importing smart speakers and other devices found to infringe five Sonos multiroom audio patents, said a notice of initial determination (ID) signed Aug. 13 by ITC Chief Administrative Law Judge Charles Bullock (see 2108130080). A final ITC determination on Bullock’s recommended import ban of the infringing Google products is due mid-December. Google and Sonos filed petitions for review of Bullock’s decision, with Google alleging the infringement findings were “predicated on misunderstandings of the plain meaning” of the patents, and Sonos arguing the ID could permit Google to “continue importing every single product by making trivial software changes” in the accused goods. Prominent engineers and producers Tom Elmhirst, Nigel Godrich, Noah Goldstein, Chris Jenkins, Emily Lazar and Manny Marroquin “have collectively been working with Sonos to tune its speakers for over five years,” they said. “During our collaboration we have observed Sonos continually pushing the boundaries of home audio and leading in the space,” they said. “Sonos invented multi-room wireless audio, and we appreciate how Sonos listens to our feedback and incorporates it into their products. This is unusual for tech companies, which typically prefer to ‘engineer’ everything in-house, without asking creative professionals like us for our input.”

The UHD Alliance application to trademark the Filmmaker Mode logo as a certification mark for compliant TVs got a notice of allowance from the Patent and Trademark Office after the application cleared its 30-day publication window last month without opposition (see 2108130018), agency records show. UHDA has six months to file a statement of use on the logo’s commercial deployment before PTO will issue a registration certificate. UHDA filed for the trademark in May 2019 and introduced it publicly three months later as the uniformly named, ease-of-access TV picture setting free of the image processing that creators disdain for rendering content in the living room as if it were shot on high-speed video rather than film (see 1908270001). Filmmaker Mode has the announced support of Hisense, Kaleidescape, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, TP Vision and Vizio.

Music label plaintiffs want a legal regime where ISPs terminate any connection accused once of infringement, replacing "the flexible, fault-based doctrines of secondary copyright liability with notice-and-terminate," defendant-appellant Cox Communications told the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a reply brief Wednesday (in Pacer, docket 21-1168). It's appealing a U.S. District Court upholding a jury's $1 billion verdict (see 2101130025). Cox said it didn't directly profit from subscribers' copyright infringement, and plaintiffs don't dispute courts have widely said a set-up fee and flat periodic payments don't constitute a benefit here. The cable operator denied it could monitor in real time the activity of its 6 million broadband subscribers. Counsel for the plaintiff-appellees didn't comment.

Frontier Communications' requested stay of piracy litigation brought by various music labels (see 2108130033) in U.S. Bankruptcy Court to consolidate a trio of such claims, but only the U.S. District Court in Manhattan can do that, the labels told the Manhattan court in an opposition (in Pacer, docket 21-cv-05050) Friday. They said they were forced to split their claims between U.S. District Court and Bankruptcy Court by the deadline for filing administrative proofs of claim in Frontier's bankruptcy. Frontier counsel didn't comment.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comments by Oct. 11, rebuttals Oct. 25, identifying online and physical markets it should consider including in its 2021 “notorious markets” report, says Monday’s Federal Register. The annual report lists markets singled out for “substantial copyright piracy or trademark counterfeiting,” said USTR. Its “issue focus” for 2021 “will examine the adverse impact of counterfeiting on workers involved with the manufacture of counterfeit goods,” it said.

Vizio smart TVs are using the inventions embedded in seven Maxell display and image processing patents dating to June 2010 without a license, alleged an infringement complaint (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Vizio left “the majority of its TV products unlicensed” after Maxell’s license agreement with Vizio’s third-party suppliers expired, said the complaint. Vizio has been “specifically aware” of its infringement “since at least 2018, through correspondence and interactions with Maxell’s licensing agent” about a new license agreement, it said. “Maxell believed that the parties could reach a mutually beneficial solution,” but that process “stalled,” it said. “Vizio and Maxell exchanged additional correspondence and information, including exemplary claim charts and proposed licensing terms,” as recently as July 13, it said. Vizio declined comment Monday.

The self-adjusting speaker invention that Vizio described in the U.S. patent it landed Tuesday (see 2108170010) is embedded in its commercially available P-Series Elevate Dolby Atmos sound bar, emailed a spokesperson. When the Elevate soundbar detects Atmos content through metadata, “it rotates certain speakers upwards to provide the height channels off of the ceiling,” she said. For non-Atmos content, “these speakers rotate to face forward to provide wide separation and better stereo performance,” she said. “This makes the bar dynamic based on content.”