The International Trade Commission voted Friday to begin a Tariff Act Section 337 investigation (ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-950) into allegations that Dell electronics with near field communication functions or battery power-up functions violate NXP Semiconductor patents, the ITC said. NXP filed the underlying complaint Feb. 10 (see 1502130026), alleging Dell’s XPS 15, XPS 12 and Jabra Revo Wireless headset copy its NFC technology that allows data exchange using radio technology over short distances, without special registration passkeys required by Bluetooth devices. NXP is asking for a limited exclusion order and cease and desist order banning import and sale of infringing Dell devices. A Dell spokesman declined to comment.

The International Trade Commission seeks comment on public interest factors that should influence its decision on whether to issue a limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders banning imports of TV sets that allegedly infringe patents held by CrestaTech (337-TA-910), the ITC said in a notice. According to the January 2014 complaint, integrated circuit TV tuners copying CrestaTech’s patents are being manufactured and imported in LG, Samsung, Sharp and Vizio sets (see 14022823). Hon Hai Precision Industry, MaxLinear, SIO International, Top Victory and Wistron are also respondents to the investigation (see 14061217). The investigation covers infringement of CrestaTech’s patented design that purportedly eliminates the need for bulky and complicated “can tuners,” letting electronics manufacturers make thinner flat panel TVs, said CrestaTech's complaint.

MPEG LA will run the DisplayPort patent portfolio license program on behalf of “initial” DisplayPort technology owners Hitachi Maxell, Philips, Silicon Image and Sony, the license administrator said Thursday. The DisplayPort license provides coverage for a variety of digital interface technology standards used in connecting AV sources on computer monitors, video projectors, TVs, PCs, graphic cards, motherboards, storage devices, smartphones, tablets and cameras, it said. Like the other license programs MPEG LA runs, the DisplayPort program “gives product suppliers convenient access to important technologies under a single patent license enabling them to focus their resources on innovation and new product creation instead of protracted licensing and litigation,” it said. MPEG LA also “welcomes any party that believes it has patents that are essential to the DisplayPort standard to submit them for an evaluation of their essentiality by MPEG LA’s patent experts and inclusion in the License if determined to be essential,” it said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation asked a U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, to invalidate what the digital rights group calls a "junk patent," said an EFF news release. It said EFF partnered with Durie Tangri to defend Bytephoto.com from what EFF described as an “outrageous patent suit from a company that claims to hold the rights to online competitions on social networks where users vote for the winner.” Bytephoto.com has hosted user-submitted photos and competitions for best photo since 2003, EFF said. In 2007, Garfum.com applied for a patent on the “method of sharing multi-media content among users in a global computer network,” and filed an infringement lawsuit against Bytephoto.com in September 2014. EFF argued that “this kind of abstract idea using generic computer technology cannot be patented” and asked that the patent be declared invalid, in a motion to dismiss, the release said. "It's part of our job to identify stupid patents and to try to get rid of them, and this is one of the silliest I have ever seen," said EFF Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer. "Our client has been running 'vote-for-your-favorite-photo' polls for years, just for fun and the love of photography,” said Nazer, who's also EFF's Mark Cuban chair to eliminate stupid patents. “The idea that you could patent this abstract idea -- and then demand a settlement to go away -- goes against both patent law and common sense," he said. "Patents like this improperly interfere with the ability of people to use the Internet to do things they've been doing in the analog world for generations,” said EFF staff attorney Vera Ranieri. This patent is “interfering with the age-old tradition of like-minded enthusiasts getting together to celebrate their hobbies," Ranieri said: "Demanding a payout for infringement on an obviously bad patent like this one isn't just unfair,” it also is “a chilling effect against those who would want to use the Internet to expand their community." Garfum.com didn't comment.

The U.S. and Japan joined the Hague system for the global registration of industrial designs, adding "two of the world’s biggest economies" to a registry “that supports creators worldwide,” the World Intellectual Property Organization said in an announcement Friday. According to statistics from WIPO, which runs the registry, 8.2 percent of all design applications worldwide in 2013 were filed by applicants from the U.S., and 4.7 percent by applicants in Japan, the agency said. WIPO hopes other countries will consider joining the Hague system now that the U.S. and Japan have, it said. WIPO touts the 64-country-strong Hague system as offering a cost-effective means of registering industrial designs in a large number of countries, “providing design owners broad geographical protection of their designs with a minimum of formality and expense.” A Hague registration “produces the same effect of a grant of protection in each of the designated contracting parties as if the design had been registered directly with each national office, unless protection is refused by the national office,” WIPO said.

A proposal by IEEE to update the IEEE Standards Association’s (IEEE-SA) patent policy won't be challenged by the Department of Justice, DOJ said Monday. IEEE had contacted the DOJ and asked whether the proposed revisions to its patent policy violated antitrust laws. Based on reasons IEEE gave DOJ for the patent update, such as adding clarity to “the commitment patent holders voluntarily make regarding the licensing of patent claims,” Justice said it decided not to challenge the new patent policy. “IEEE’s decision to update its policy, if adopted by the IEEE Board, has the potential to help patent holders and standards implementers to reach mutually beneficial licensing agreements and to facilitate the adoption of pro-competitive standards,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse, who heads Justice's Antitrust Division.

The Patent and Trademark Office granted Rentrak a patent for detecting and correcting TV viewership levels caused by missing or dropped set-top box viewing information, the company said Tuesday. U.S. Patent No. 8,930,978 “minimizes” the impact of outages that operators experience, Rentrak said. The patent “should give our clients continued confidence in our commitment to the best television measurement from massive and passive databases," Rentrak CEO Bill Livek said in a news release.

Apple-watchers spotted a new U.S. patent (8,922,530) filed in January 2010 and granted Tuesday for a “communicating stylus,” and it has many guessing that this may mean that an iPen smart pen device is on the horizon. A close read of the patent listing Aleksandar Pance, of Saratoga, California, as the inventor and Apple as the assignee confirms that Apple is talking about an electronic pen that captures handwriting or drawing, on any surface or in 3D space, and sends it to a computer for display on a screen. But that same close read also reveals a marked shortage of hard technical facts on how this is actually achieved. The Livescribe family of pens already offers very accurate handwriting capture, but specialized paper is needed. The paper has micro-marks on the surface that form a near-invisible map. An infrared light sensor in the pen uses the map to keep accurate track of its movement over the paper. In the patent, Apple says this approach is a “problem” and aims for “a stylus that can enter data into a computing device, regardless of the surface with which it is used.” The Apple stylus will contain a “position sensing device such as an accelerometer,” which tracks position “with respect to an initial or zero point,” the patent says. This sounds similar to the error-prone “dead reckoning” used by navigation systems before GPS became available. Apple’s patent documentation offers little help on how accuracy will be improved sufficiently to capture handwriting legibly, other than to suggest the use of multiple sensors and “time stamped” radio or sonic waves, with or without “triangulation” and with or without a magnetometer to register “magnetic north.” Apple representatives didn’t comment.

Corel licensed Blu-ray patents through One-Blue, the one-stop-shop patent pool said Monday. Fifteen licensors have their 10,000 Blu-ray patents administered through One-Blue, including CyberLink, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, JVC Kenwood, LG, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Taiyo Yuden and Yamaha.

The Patent and Trademark Office will host its first trade secrets symposium Jan. 8, said a PTO news release Tuesday. U.S. government, industry and legal officials will discuss issues of trade secrets theft, including proposed legislation. The event will be at the PTO office in Alexandria, Virginia, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (see here to register).