Strong enforcement against unfair trade practices “boosts U.S. exports, facilitates innovation, and supports job creation here at home,” the Alliance for Trade Enforcement wrote U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer Wednesday. The alliance is a coalition of trade associations and business groups, including MPA, RIAA and the Telecommunications Industry Association. To end bad trade behavior, the alliance “supports actions and policies that encourage U.S. trading partners to open their markets, reduce barriers to trade, and provide effective protection and enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights,” it said. With the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on free trade now in effect, “we must ensure that Canada and Mexico abide by the commitments that they have made and treat U.S. interests fairly,” the letter said. It hails the “important leap forward” of USMCA’s digital trade provisions,” it said. Mexico has been a “major source of camcorded movies” uploaded to the internet, “facilitating international piracy of American content,” it said. USMCA requires Mexico to impose “enhanced criminal remedies into its national law,” it said. USTR didn’t comment.
Rendering high-quality HDR faithfully on a home TV screen can be “a giant can of worms,” Aurora Gordon, senior colorist at post-production studio ArsenalFX Color, told a SMPTE webinar Thursday. “A lot of different factors and variations in home viewing environments” could botch HDR content or make it look ideal, she said. How consumers “have their settings dialed in” can be another, she said. As a colorist, “basically you can’t think about it,” she said. “What we can do is correct our images in a controlled environment.” Colorists can’t control the “modulations that are going to happen in a home viewing environment,” she said. Gordon's personal favorites of her coloring include The Tick for Amazon Prime Video, with a character’s “very, very vivid” blue suit that “can take advantage of the gamut part of the HDR transform,” she said. Raising Dion on Netflix had lightning, "a really fun element in HDR,” she said.
COVID-19 caused communication service providers to “pause” large-scale fiber installations, including fiber to the home, said Exfo CEO Philippe Morin on a Wednesday investor call. The Quebec City company supplies test equipment and services to wireless carriers. Sales declined 10.1% in fiscal Q3 ended May 31. “As economies are gradually reopening around the world, we are witnessing an increase in our funnel in our opportunities for optical and high-speed test solutions,” said Morin. Exfo’s “advanced optical test solutions” for its manufacturing and lab clients is delivering “healthy growth, mainly in China, where we've seen an acceleration of 5G investment,” he said. It “remains difficult” to forecast the pandemic’s impact on the global economy, he said. “long-term drivers,” including fiber and 5G deployments, “remain intact,” he said. Customers AT&T and Verizon “think it's so critical” to speed their 5G deployments in North America, he said. “In certain countries in Europe, you've seen a bit of delays.” Exfo’s factories are “up and running” and “fully operational,” said Morin. There remain bottlenecks in “the whole logistics side of things,” he said. “There's still some challenges in terms of flights and trucks.”
COVID-19 forced the National Retail Federation to cancel its Jan. 17-19 NRF 2021 expo and conference as a physical show at New York’s Javits Convention Center, said the association Thursday. It’s the first known major trade show in 2021 to fall to the pandemic. NRF 2021 was scheduled to open as an in-person show about a week after CES 2021 closes Jan. 9. NRF will move the physical show to June 6-8, and host a virtual event over five days in January. The online event and the physical show in June will be themed “Forward Together,” said NRF. “Given the understandable concerns among all of our stakeholders regarding the availability and effectiveness of treatments or a vaccine for the coronavirus, we have concluded it is not feasible to maintain our original schedule of an in-person January 2021 trade show,” said NRF CEO Matthew Shay. Another complication is the use of Javits as a 2,500-bed COVID-19 Army field hospital. Those circumstances forced the cancellation last month of the Oct. 21-22 NAB Show New York as a physical event (see 2006090058)
SVS Sound CEO Gary Yacoubian credits CTA for its "very thoughtful approach” to the safety in scheduling CES 2021 as a physical show amid the pandemic, he told us. Yacoubian, a former CTA chairman, is back on its executive board. “So take this with a grain of salt,” he said. CTA is “looking at every way they can to protect the health and safety” of attendees, said Yacoubian. “I’m optimistic that if there is a CES -- and it’s all systems go at this time -- it will be safe.” It won't be “as well-attended” as in previous years, he said. Many products “in our space need to be physically experienced,” said Yacoubian. “They’re not just ideas you can experience in theory.” With all physical shows canceled with COVID-19, “I can’t imagine a CES that’s more needed by our industry, by the tech world.” CTA would “never do anything that endangers people,” said Yacoubian.
Kiss Library runs virtual bookstores advertising "‘unbeatable prices’ for a simple reason: its catalogs are replete with pirated ebooks,” Amazon and Penguin Random House alleged (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Kiss Library’s illegal actions “divert potential customers to its sites, where authors and publishers do not receive any royalties for the sales,” it said Tuesday. John Grisham, Doug Preston, Monique Truong, Scott Turow and eight other authors joined as plaintiffs. “This lawsuit aims to bring down” Kiss Library to stop its “notorious pirating and unlawful copying, display, distribution, and sale of their ebooks” in the U.S., it said. Kiss Library didn’t comment.
Google and Sonos can’t find common ground in the claim-constructions phase of the International Trade Commission investigation into allegations Google devices infringe five Sonos multiroom audio patents, said a Sonos brief (login required) posted Monday in docket 337-TA-1191. Chief Administrative Law Judge Charles Bullock should reject Google’s proposed constructions as “legally improper,” said Sonos. ITC staff agrees with Sonos “for the most part,” it said. Google also claims to have staff backing (see 2007060005). Google began infringing Sonos’ patents when it launched its first wireless multiroom audio product, Chromecast Audio, in 2015, said Sonos. “Google’s misappropriation of Sonos’s patented technology has only proliferated, as Google has expanded its wireless multi-room audio system to more than a dozen different infringing products.” Google denies the allegations and last month countersued Sonos on patent infringement allegations.
COVID-19 stay-at-home mandates are a “once-in-a-generation catalyst” for over-the-top streaming, said Cinedigm CEO Chris McGurk on a fiscal Q4 investor call. It’s “vastly accelerating the dramatic and permanent cord-cutting consumer shift to streaming that was already underway,” he said. Cinedigm will phase out its “legacy” digital cinema business over the next two fiscal years, he said. “We are moving to become a pure streaming company with sustainable profitability.” Ad-backed viewership went from virtually zero 15 months ago to 9.7 million viewers in March, he said. Viewership March 31 to May 31, during the peak of the lockdowns, increased to 13.2 million, up 38%, he said Monday. The smart TV has emerged as the “next major battleground in the streaming wars,” said Cinedigm Networks President Erick Opeka, whom McGurk called the “architect” of Cinedigm’s OTT transition. “Just a few years ago, smart TV’s were not very smart, with outdated user interfaces, limited content and apps and very high prices.” More modern smart TVs “have become usable, fast and cheap with fantastic content options,” said Opeka. “With more than 250 million sets shipping annually worldwide, it is easy to see how this business scales.” The quarter ended March 31.
Apple seeks declaratory judgment iPhones don’t infringe two Zipit Wireless instant messaging patents, said its complaint (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Zipit alleged infringement June 11 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, then voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice two weeks later. Zipit maintained through years of negotiations that Apple “required a license,” but Apple disagreed, and the two sides never reached an accord, said Friday's complaint. It’s “highly likely” Zipit will again sue, it said: “The cloud of Zipit’s allegations and litigation hangs over Apple.” There’s a “real, immediate, and justiciable controversy,” it said. A “judicial declaration is necessary” to resolve it, said the complaint. Zipit didn’t comment Monday.
Google and Sonos “meaningfully narrow[ed] the claim construction disputes” in the International Trade Commission’s intellectual property probe into Sonos allegations that Google devices infringe five Sonos multiroom audio patents (see 2002060070), Google said (login required) Thursday in docket 337-TA-1191. “Several critical differences remain with respect to terms.” Google filed to persuade Chief Administrative Law Judge Charles Bullock to resolve the disputes in its favor. Sonos didn’t comment Monday. Two of the Sonos patents “purport to present a solution to two alleged problems in the audio synchronization field,” said Google. The patents “overstate their technical contributions” because they rely on “well-known techniques,” said Google: “Synchronization concepts” used in a local area network “long predate the patents’ claimed inventions.” Sonos “now seeks to narrowly interpret the claims” about LAN to avoid “the abundance of prior art,” said the brief. Google proposes defining a LAN by its “plain and ordinary meaning,” and ITC staff agrees, it said. Sonos proposes regarding a LAN as a data network that links devices within a limited area, said Google. The sides agree another of the patents describes different techniques that might be used to perform “equalization of audio data,” said the brief. “Dispute lies in whether each of these techniques necessarily result in equalization every time.”