Commerce Department export restrictions forced chipmaker Xilinx to remove all remaining Huawei-related “revenue expectations” from its outlook for fiscal 2020 ending in March, said CEO Victor Peng on a fiscal Q2 call Wednesday. He cited "trade restrictions with Huawei and the uncertainty presented to our business." He hopes "agreement between the U.S. and Chinese governments is reached as soon as possible, so we can resume engaging in a manner consistent with an important customer.” Xilinx got about $50 million revenue from Huawei in the first half ended Sept. 28, the “vast majority in Q1 before the restrictions, he said. Q2 sales in the Xilinx Wired and Wireless Group in which the Huawei business resides were down 8 percent sequentially, said Peng. Xilinx gets about 8 percent of its total revenue from Huawei in a normal year, he said. Though Xilinx “expedited” license applications, it hasn’t landed approvals, he said. Commerce got 200-plus Huawei-related license requests since the Chinese company was added to the agency’s entity list (see 1910230029). Huawei and Commerce didn't comment Thursday. Xilinx determined in Q2 there were some “older products that we could legally continue to ship” to Huawei, said Peng. It turned out that revenue from those products was “essentially negligible,” he said. “After one quarter of seeing that and not seeing any additional license approvals, we have decided that it's just prudent to take all the risk out.”

The Commerce Department got 200-plus Huawei-related license requests since the Chinese company was added to the agency’s entity list, according to a Commerce spokesperson. “Given the complexity of the matter, the interagency process is ongoing to ensure we correctly identified which licenses were safe to approve.” Companies haven't received approvals or denials, said trade lawyers with clients that submitted license applications. Huawei didn't comment Wednesday.

Technicolor is the newest licensee to join HEVC Advance, said the H.265 patent-pool company Tuesday. It's an "important milestone," said HEVC Advance, which launched in 2015 with Technicolor as one of five founding members (see 1503260045). Technicolor withdrew less than a year later to license its H.265 patent portfolio directly to device manufacturers, unhappy with the HEVC Advance decision to charge content-streaming royalties (see 1602040042). HEVC Advance later dropped its content fees on “anecdotal evidence” the royalties were hurting H.265 adoption (see 1803140037). "Technicolor did participate in the development phase of the pool but ultimately decided not to become a founding licensor (admittedly at the last moment)," emailed HEVC Advance CEO Pete Moller Tuesday. "Once someone joins as a licensor they cannot withdraw until 12/31/2025 at the earliest. In Technicolor’s case they 'left' before they signed any of the documents." When Technicolor departed, "they did indicate at that time that they planned to license their patents on their own," said Moller. "Ultimately, they sold a number to Dolby (which are in our pool) and then last year 'sold' their entire IP business to InterDigital."

CTA let lapse its 10-year-old trademark to the CEA logo, and the Patent and Trademark Office canceled the registration Friday, agency records show. CTA didn’t respond by the Sept. 17 deadline to PTO’s “courtesy reminder” that the trademark would soon be up for renewal. Two other active CEA trademarks are due to expire in 2023 and 2025, say PTO records. CEA applied for them not long before changing its name to CTA in November 2015 (see 1511110002). PTO granted two trademark registrations May 28, one for the full Consumer Technology Association name, the other for the CTA initials.

The Copyright Office is proposing significant increases in filing fees to take effect in the spring. Thursday’s announcement said the proposed fee schedule shows large increases for “registration of a claim in an original work of authorship,” including a nearly 500 percent increase for a paperwork filing involving “registration of updates and revisions to a database that predominantly consists of nonphotographic works.” The fee for that paperwork filing would increase from $85 to $500. CO proposes an electronic filing for registering a claim in an original work of authorship would increase from $55 to $250, for paper filing, $65 to $250. Some fee schedules are reduced by about 20 percent, and other increases range from 15-180 percent.

Copyright legislation Congress is considering could “have devastating effects on regular Internet users and little-to-no effect on true infringers,” Electronic Frontier Foundation Policy and Activism Manager Katharine Trendacosta wrote Monday. EFF urged supporters to tell Congress not to pass the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (see 1909110030). The “obscure” board envisioned by the bill would have “enormous power” to levy huge penalties against “ordinary Americans,” she wrote.

Nokia declared more than 2,000 patent “families” to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute as 5G “standard-essential,” said the company Wednesday. ETSI is one of seven standards development organizations that belong to 3GPP, which is managing 5G standardization. The 2,000th family includes U.S. and European patents on higher-throughput “network resources” for smartphones, industrial devices and other equipment, said Nokia.

CTA applied to register the NEXTGEN TV logo as a certification mark Sept. 25, the day before introducing it publicly as the linchpin of the industry’s go-to-market strategy for ATSC 3.0 TVs (see 1909260021), said newly posted records at the Patent and Trademark Office. The logo “is intended to certify that the goods to which the mark will be applied have been evaluated to meet certain use and performance standards, namely that the goods are ATSC 3.0 standard compliant,” said the application that Wiley Rein filed on CTA’s behalf. The association will “later provide” a copy of the “standards governing the use of the certification mark on or in connection with the goods/services in the application,” it said. Details remain murky on the performance metrics that would minimally qualify a TV to bear the logo.

The International Trade Commission opened two Tariff Act Section 337 investigations into allegations that imports of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. semiconductors and the chips and downstream products that contain them, infringe Globalfoundries patents, said the commission Monday. In one investigation (docket 337-TA-1176), the ITC will consider whether to issue a limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders banning imports of allegedly infringing TSMC semiconductors; chips that contain those semiconductors from Xilinx, Qualcomm and MediaTek; and TVs and smartphones that contain TSMC semiconductors from Hisense, TCL, BLU, Motorola, Google and OnePlus. In a second investigation (docket 337-TA-1177), the ITC will consider the same sanctions for a different set of allegedly infringing TSMC semiconductors, plus the chips that incorporate them from Apple, Nvidia, Broadcom and Cisco. The ITC also will probe smartphones, tablets, wearable devices and set-top boxes with TSMC semiconductors from Apple, Nvidia, Asus and Lenovo, and switches that incorporate them from Arista and Cisco. Representatives of the various respondents we canvassed didn’t comment Tuesday.

Pivotal Commware responded to questions by FCC Wireless Bureau staff on its request for a waiver of Section 20.21(f) of rules on industrial signal booster labeling disclosure requirements (see 1909190012). Initial comments were due Monday in docket 19-272. “Pivotal will sell the Device only to wireless service providers, who will, in turn, provide the Device to their 5G broadband customers as an integral part of the service provider’s broadband service offering,” the company said: “The Device will not be available at retail. Instead, wireless service providers will deliver the Device to their customers, with instructions on how to self-install the Device on a window.” It poses no interference risk “because the Device cannot operate without authentication from the service provider. In the event the customer terminates service, the service provider will be able to shut down and lock the Device remotely,” Pivotal said. Booster company SureCall said the FCC should deny the waiver. “The labeling requirement for Industrial Signal Boosters serves a critically important purpose in protecting the integrity of wireless networks and it should not be waived for any party,“ said SureCall in comments not yet posted: “Waiver in this case would significantly harm consumers by giving a single manufacturer an unfair advantage in the sale of its non-conforming products.”