Patent and Trademark Office Director Michelle Lee is to testify before the House IP Subcommittee Sept. 13 on PTO operations, the House Judiciary Committee said Tuesday. The hearing will focus primarily on the Department of Commerce inspector general’s report last week that said PTO employees fraudulently billed the office for almost 290,000 hours of work in late 2014 and 2015 they didn’t perform and collected $18.3 million in salary for those hours. The Commerce IG concluded in the report that the full amount of time that PTO employees falsely billed may be double what the office was able to conclusively estimate was fraudulent. Had PTO employees worked all of the hours they claimed, they would have been able to reduce the office’s backlog of patent applications by almost 16,000 cases, the IG said. PTO's application backlog currently stands at more than 549,000 cases. “I am extremely concerned about the recent Inspector General’s report that indicates time and attendance fraud is still a serious problem” at PTO, said House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in a news release. “The amount of wasted man-hours that could have been spent reducing the patent backlog is astounding, not to mention the millions of taxpayer dollars that were wasted paying USPTO employees for work they were not doing.” The Commerce IG report “raises serious questions about the integrity of our patent system,” said House IP Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. “If the PTO can’t even guarantee sufficient oversight of its employees’ timecards, how can we be assured patent examiners aren’t just rubberstamping ideas without oversight as well?” House Judiciary said House IP also will examine PTO’s progress in implementing the 2011 America Invents Act, and other issues on patent law revamp efforts. Goodlatte noted a July GAO study that recommended PTO act to more consistently define patent quality and better communicate its patent quality standards in agency-produced documents (see 1607200080). House IP’s hearing is to begin at 1 p.m. in Rayburn 2237.

Rovi and Dish Network signed a 10-year patent renewal license agreement that extends Dish's access to Rovi's Conversation Services natural language platform and other intellectual property, Rovi said in a news release Monday. Rovi said nine of the 10 largest U.S. pay TV operators have license agreements with it, with seven of those signed in the past seven quarters. It said the patent license renewal is subject to certain contingencies relating to the closing of Rovi’s acquisition of TiVo, which is expected to become effective Sept. 7. Dish also will give TiVo a release for past products and a going-forward covenant not to sue under Dish's existing patents during the 10-year license term, Rovi said in a SEC filing Monday. In exchange, Rovi said, TiVo will provide Dish some products during the 10-year span and also pay Dish $60 million over the next year.

Google fashioned a radical new way of remote-controlling consumer electronics gear and appliances through recognizable gestures using local radar transmitters and sensors instead of video cameras and receptors with no need for line of sight between the user and the sensor, Patent and Trademark Office records show. Details are being revealed in a string of lengthy applications (US 20160098089, US 20160055201, US 20160054792, US 20160041618, US 20160041617 and US 20150346820) that Google filed two years ago at the PTO and are now being published for open access. The gigahertz frequencies used for the radar fields, and the power at which they operate, are chosen to suit the devices and their working location, the patents said. The radar field may be generated by fixed transmitters in the home or office or store, by a smartphone or smartwatch, they said. Google patents give many examples of radar control. If someone enters “Best Italian restaurant?” as a search term on a mobile device, the device will return much more useful results if the user can assist by sweeping the device over the immediate surroundings, the patents said. In a home or office, fixed transmitters, perhaps embedded in the walls, can bathe the room in a radar field that detects any preprogrammed gesture made by the occupants’ arms or hands, they said. The overriding advantage of using radar detectors, with direct and reflected fields, instead of line-of-sight cameras, is that gesture commands aren't blocked by furniture or walls, the patents said. By combining biometric sensing with gesture recognition, multiple appliances also can be controlled by multiple people, from almost anywhere in the vicinity, they said: This would eliminate any need for people to sit awkwardly where they can touch a screen. Everything can be controlled by waving hands, arms or even legs and feet, the documents said. Google didn’t comment Friday on plans to commercialize the invention.

The DOJ and FTC jointly sought comment Friday on a proposed update of their 1995 guidelines for enforcing antitrust policy on IP licensing matters protected by relevant copyright, patent and trade secret laws. The revisions are intended to “modernize” the existing IP guidelines to reflect recent IP-related court cases, the 2016 Defend Trade Secrets Act and changes in the lengths of copyright and patent terms, the agencies said. The update also addresses issues that the government raised in the pair's 2007 report on antitrust IP issues and in the FTC's 2011 IP marketplace report, including language that reflects the agencies' view that “the antitrust laws generally do not impose liability upon a firm for a unilateral refusal to assist its competitors, in part because doing so may undermine incentives for investment and innovation.” The agencies also are updating the guidelines to reflect an analysis of markets affected by licensing arrangements that mirrors their approach for horizontal mergers. The new language retains the idea of “innovation markets” but refers to them as “research and development markets” to better reflect how the DOJ and FTC defined them in enforcement actions, the agencies said. The IP licensing guidelines “have been invaluable to the department’s investigative and enforcement efforts since they were issued in 1995,” said Antitrust Division head Renata Hesse in a news release. “They have also guided business planning, and they have been cited by courts, in numerous government briefs, business review letters, and policy documents. Although the Guidelines are sound, it is time to modernize them to reflect changes in the law since they were issued.” Comments on the guidelines revamp are due Sept. 26. FTC members voted 3-0 to issue the request for modernization.

Naming two inventors from Cambridge in the U.K., Amazon Technologies of Reno landed a U.S. patent (9,398,367) that tackles a practical problem with noise-canceling headphones -- how to hear a person in the room talking with the noise-cancellation function engaged. Amazon plans to build intelligent “spotting” circuitry into the headphones that can be trained to recognize specific key words or phrases, such as “Hey Ben,” said the patent, which the Patent and Trademark Office granted July 19, based on a July 2014 application. When the headphones “hear” this key word, they can be taught to suspend or modify the noise-cancellation so the wearer can then hear what is being said, the patent said. The circuitry need not be capable of full-fledged speech recognition, just the ability to spot a few simple sounds, it said. It can however, be trained to recognize a particular voice, so the headphones do not falsely react, such as when an actor on a TV screen utters the same key phrase, it said. Amazon representatives didn’t comment Friday on plans to commercialize the invention.

Vizio landed a patent Tuesday for transparent TV backlights fashioned from “field-induced polymer electro-luminescent” (FIPEL) panels that display colored light from a front surface to a light modulator and a white light from a back surface. Inventor Matthew McRae, Vizio chief technology officer, “recognized that display devices generally do not have lighting intended to reduce the contrast between the display screen and the environment behind the display screen,” says the patent (9,407,856), which was based on a May 2013 application. In home-viewing environments, “the contrast between the front of the display and the area behind the display is generally very high,” it says. “This can make viewing content tiring because the viewer's eyes cannot easily manage the brightness of the viewed content and the darkness of the environment behind the device.” Some TVs will have a built-in light source behind the display screen to remedy the problem, “but this requires additional circuitry,” it says. TV makers have shipped product with LEDs that emit light from the back surface of the set, it says: “Some of these televisions also vary the intensity of the light and the color of the light based on the content being displayed on the screen. Customer feedback in the media would suggest that a variable light source providing back filled light is annoying at best.” What’s needed is a display device “where the backlight for the light modulator, generally a LCD panel, provides light for both the light modulator and the area behind the display device,” it says. McRae’s invention uses a FIPEL backlight “to provide light from the front surface through a color filter to a light modulator such as a LCD panel and a white light from the back surface,” it says. That white light “may be diffused” through a component that’s bonded to the back surface of the FIPEL panel, it says. That diffusor “may be a frosted sheet more commonly found in front of typical LED backlight assemblies or it may consist of microstructures designed to steer or defuse light,” it says. Vizio representatives didn’t comment on plans to commercialize the new patent.

Limelight Networks reached a settlement Monday with Akamai Technologies to end their long-running patent infringement battle over an Akamai-owned content delivery system patent that was the subject of a 2014 Supreme Court case (see report in the June 3, 2014, issue). Limelight agreed to pay $54 million to Akamai -- spread over 12 consecutive quarters -- in exchange for a patent license and a commitment from both parties to reliquish their right to further appeals of the case. A U.S. District Court in Boston ordered Limelight last month to pay Akamai $51 million damages for infringing Akamai’s patent after the case was remanded from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (see 1607010068). “We are pleased by the outcome of this agreement. It eliminates the continuing risk from [Akamai’s] patent and allows us to extend the $51 million payment over a three-year period at an attractive interest rate,” said Limelight CEO Robert Lento in a news release.

George Mason University Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property Senior Scholar Adam Mossoff and 27 other U.S. academics jointly urged the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees Monday to “exercise caution” in considering the patent litigation-focused Venue Equity and Non-Uniformity Elimination (Venue) Act. (S-2733), filed in March (see 1603180057). The legislation would revamp rules for placement of patent infringement lawsuits in federal courts, requiring at least one of the parties involved in the suit be connected directly to the jurisdiction in which the lawsuit is filed. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., has said he isn’t opposed to narrowly focused patent bills like S-2733 but prefers to focus on his more comprehensive Innovation Act (HR-9), which also addresses patent litigation venue issues (see 1603250056). A “cautious stance” on bills like S-2733 is needed until the effects of the establishment of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and other changes to the patent system enacted via the 2011 America Invents Act “are better understood,” the academics said in their letter to Goodlatte and other House and Senate Judiciary leaders. Although calls for revamping venue rules sound plausible because of the high concentration of patent infringement suits in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the push for bills like S-2733 primarily is coming from tech firms and online retailers “that would rather litigate in a small number of more defendant-friendly jurisdictions,” the academics said. They said other arguments in favor of S-2733 “do not stand up to scrutiny,” including claims the bill would spread lawsuits to other courts around the country. Some S-2733 supporters “have found that restricting venue in a manner similar to the VENUE Act would likely result in concentrating more than 50% of patent lawsuits in just two districts: the District of Delaware (where most publicly traded corporations are incorporated) and the Northern District of California (where many patent defendants are headquartered),” the academics said. S-2733 would “raise costs for many patent owners by requiring them to litigate the same patent against multiple defendants in multiple jurisdictions, increasing patent litigation overall,” the academics said: The bill also “encourages the manipulation of well-settled venue rules across all areas of law by the self-serving efforts of large corporate defendants that seek to insulate themselves from the consequences of violating the law. By enacting the Venue Act, Congress would send a strong signal to corporate defendants that they can tilt the substantive playing field by simply shifting cases to defendant-friendly jurisdictions.”

Google landed a new U.S. patent that reveals details of the company’s plan to make online streaming look and feel more like over-the-air TV viewing by offering viewers the chance to channel-surf with familiar up-down hopping and instant picture previews. Current content streaming is too much of a computer experience rather than a traditional television viewing experience, says the patent, published July 19 by the Patent and Trademark Office, based on a May 2014 application. The viewer is faced with “vast amounts of content which require navigating through an endless hierarchy of menus and interacting with cumbersome search boxes,” it says. With TV viewing, “users often enjoy the somewhat addictive pleasure of scanning through content in search of something they want to watch,” it says. “In contrast, current on-demand interfaces often include elaborate text guides meant to facilitate quick surveying of available programming. But reading text requires the kind of cognitive effort that a user often attempts to avoid when watching television.” Google’s solution is to propose that as soon as the viewer accesses one content stream, the device automatically accesses a set of different content streams, chosen on a “more of the same” basis or tailored to the viewer’s preference profile, the patent says. So if the viewer chooses an action movie, the system automatically accesses several other action movies, choosing actors that the viewer has previously watched, it says. Some random content may be thrown in for serendipity purposes, it says. If the user previously has changed channels when things get scary on screen, the device steers clear of scary movies, it says. The extra streams -- Google suggests there should be at least five -- are buffered and labeled with names or numbers similar to those used by broadcast TV stations, it says. That way the viewer can get an instant preview of several online TV streams, just as if they were off-air broadcasts, it says. The buffering plays enough of the content to let the stream take over if the viewer chooses one to watch, it says. The system would work equally well with online radio stations or music delivery services, it says. Google didn’t comment on plans to commercialize the invention.

Two German inventors, working for Thomson in France, have come up with a new idea for smoothing the transition to new TV technologies, such as with the migration to 4K from 2K. A U.S. patent application published Thursday at the Patent and Trademark Office, based on an August 2014 international filing from Thomson Licensing, describes methods that effectively give the viewer local control of editing tools similar to those used by broadcasters to pan and zoom in on especially interesting parts of a wide high-resolution view. With the introduction of new TV standards comes the availability of newly increased “spatial and/or temporal resolution,” says the application, which names Malte Borsum and Axel Kochale as the inventors. But viewers who watch TV on an existing set that’s not upgraded for the new standards obviously “cannot take any advantage of the improved technology,” it says. “Usually, the full image is downscaled.” The application envisions a new 4K set-top with one output for viewers who own a 4K TV, and extra outputs for 2K sets or mobile devices. These extra outputs can either down-convert the 4K image to 2K, or offer crop, pan and zoom options, it says. The set-top then expands selected parts of the 4K image to fill the 2K TV or mobile screen with full HD resolution, it says. Image expansion can be programmed, user-controlled or governed by metadata that the broadcaster sends over the air or the internet, it says. Zooming may be auto-centered along horizon lines or contoured to fit the shape of a soccer field, and manually manipulated by the user, it says. If a broadcaster sends metadata, the set-top can be taught to remember previous settings and self-adjusts the image at prescribed scene cuts, it says. The metadata can be buried in the digital stream or embedded in the picture as brief flashes of QR code. Though the idea is mainly aimed at smoothing migration from old to new TV standards, says Thomson, it can also be more widely used to give all viewers interactive control of what they see on screen.