The three patents that haptics technology supplier Immersion is citing in International Trade Commission and federal court infringement complaints are “foundational” in nature and “vital to the use of haptics on a mobile device in particular,” Immersion CEO Victor Viegas said on a Thursday conference call with analysts about the complaints. Immersion said Thursday it filed against Apple and AT&T on six models of iPhones and the Apple Watch. “We felt they were the appropriate patents to bring to case in this particular action.” The three patents were never previously “litigated” in earlier Immersion patent lawsuits against other carriers and manufacturers, Viegas said. The complaints in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, and at the ITC allege violations of U.S. patents 8,619,051, 8,773,356 and 8,659,571. The ITC complaint also seeks a Section 337 import investigation and an exclusion order barring import of the infringing Apple products. “Immersion’s inventions have literally shaped haptics as we know it today,” said Viegas. “Years of foresight, tenacity, passion have led us to the spot we find ourselves today. Haptics exists because the world needs it. Immersion has made it a reality. We’re the undisputed leader in haptics. We’ve carefully crafted a valuable set of solutions, knowhow, IP, even an ecosystem of partners to bring these rich experiences to consumers through over 3 billion devices. My hope is that those of you who really care about Immersion see the stunning success we’ve had in achieving this broad and meaningful adoption.” The complaints against Apple and AT&T are “an important step in our efforts to be fairly compensated for our achievements and our continuing efforts to bring touch to the markets we serve,” he said. Apple and AT&T representatives didn’t comment.

Dish Network is modifying its AutoHop commercial-skipping service as part of an out-of-court settlement with Fox. In a stipulated dismissal filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, plaintiffs Fox, Twentieth Century Fox Film and Fox Television Holdings and defendants Dish and EchoStar said they agreed to a voluntary dismissal with prejudice of Fox's 2012 complaint about Dish's PrimeTime Anytime VOD service. Dish and Fox last month indicated they were discussing a possible settlement (see 1601270015). In a joint statement Thursday, they said as part of the settlement "Dish's AutoHop commercial-skipping functionality will not be available for owned and affiliated Fox stations until seven days after a program first airs." Fox argued in its 2012 lawsuit that PrimeTime Anytime and its AutoHop service, which strips out commercials from network programming, was an "attempt to camouflage" copyright infringement (see report in the Aug. 28, 2012, issue). Dish still is fighting a 2012 suit brought by NBC Studios (see 1208280067), while AutoHop's legal fights with ABC, CBS and Disney Studios were settled in 2014 (see 1412100057).

Tech copyright holders and allies told the U.S. Trade Representative's office of the risk BitTorrent portals, cyberlockers and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in Asia, Europe and North America pose to industry because of piracy, in comments posted online throughout the week (see 1602080061), 1602090053 and here). Comments on USTR's so-called Special 301 report on countries that infringe on U.S. intellectual property from a group that includes the Entertainment Software Association, MPAA and RIAA cited a September report on cyberlockers, which are centralized file-hosting sites for user-uploaded content and often used to infringe copyrighted material. Online security company NetNames wrote the report, which was commissioned by the Digital Citizens Alliance, a coalition with an advisory board that it said includes union, National Consumers League and tech officials. DCA analyzed 30 cyberlocker sites -- split evenly between streaming and direct download cyberlockers -- saying they collected nearly $100 million in revenue in the past year. Cyberlockers, P2P networks and various physical locations across the globe are havens for piracy and copyright infringement, said the International Intellectual Property Alliance, with members including ESA, the Independent Film & Television Alliance, MPAA and RIAA. “Online content theft poses a significant and ever-evolving challenge,” it said. “Content thieves are taking advantage of a wide constellation of easy-to-use, consumer-friendly online technologies such as direct download and streaming cyberlockers, which, in turn, have given rise to a lucrative form of secondary infringement on the part of ‘linking sites’ that index stolen movie and television content hosted on other sites.” Alibaba-owned Taobao, a Chinese e-commerce company that had faced scrutiny for infringing goods, said it removed 99.23 million allegedly infringing website listings between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30. Almost 94 percent of those takedowns were done “proactively,” it said. More than 33 percent of the takedowns were a result of a “special” campaign between Taobao and 1,208 copyright holders in the U.S., it said. That campaign resulted in penalties for more than 200,000 Taobao merchants, it said. Time Warner's HBO Latin America, meanwhile, focused on the region. It said "many Caribbean and Central American governments often fail to enforce HBO LA’s copyrights and licenses, permitting piracy of HBO LA’s IP [intellectual property] without legal consequence." The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers also said Caribbean countries and China don't always respect IP rights: "Unfortunately, there has been little progress over the past year in the conditions that ASCAP’s members face in these markets."

The HEVC Advance patent pool recently began to allow licensors in the rival MPEG LA H.265 pool to hold membership in both pools, HEVC Advance CEO Pete Moller said in an interview. “We do allow existing MPEG LA licensors to join our pool. We have a provision, a procedure, that allows somebody in that pool, if they want to join our pool, they can do so,” he said. “We’re just starting to make people aware of that. There are some conditions.” Licensors could hold dual membership, provided they meet an HEVC Advance-imposed “condition or two, so that we don’t have a situation where people are getting paid twice,” Moller said. HEVC Advance hasn’t gotten any takers, he said. “We’re just now making it known. We’re not going out of our way on it.” It's not a repudiation of the two-pool structure on H.265 licensing, he said. “A lot of people felt that the MPEG LA pool met their needs.” When HEVC Advance launched its initial rate structure in July, it met with industry pushback over high prices and the imposition of content royalties (see 1507220043), “It was a little bit of a setback that we had to retrench and go back and rethink it,” Moller said when asked to assess the pool’s first year as a startup. “In the last two or three months, we’ve regrouped, we pivoted, we’re listening better, and frankly I’m very pleased.” HEVC Advance soon will be 500 patents strong, up from 370 now, he said. There was “no doubt, a little bit of a headwind when we initially launched, but I think we’ve fully recovered,” he said. One common area of query has been HEVC Advance’s revised policy of licensing content for free to services that charge no fee to end users, he said. Though HEVC Advance now licenses content royalty-free to public broadcasters and over-the-air services, confusion over new TV Everywhere “complex business models” has raised unforeseen questions among prospective licensors that often require time-consuming answers, he said. Another area of confusion has been the issue of yearly royalty caps, Moller said. “We initially didn’t have a cap,” he said, “and the marketplace pretty loudly told us, ‘Look you need a cap, you can’t not have caps.’” Having launched formal licensing activities in mid-January, HEVC Advance hasn’t signed its first licensee, and doesn’t expect to before the end of Q2, Moller said. “It simply takes that long to get these documents done,” he said of the documentation process for patent users. Once signed, “they’re long-term agreements -- 10 years plus,” he said.

MPAA and the Donuts domain name registry said they reached an agreement to ensure that websites using Donuts-registered domain names don’t engage in large-scale piracy. “This agreement demonstrates that the tech community and content creators can work together on voluntary initiatives to help ensure vibrant, legal digital marketplaces that benefit all members of the online ecosystem,” said MPAA CEO Chris Dodd in a Tuesday news release. MPAA will be a “Trusted Notifier” for reporting digital piracy websites using Donuts-registered domain names, Donuts and MPAA said. The agreement will have strict standards for making referrals, including “clear evidence of pervasive copyright infringement” and a “representation” that MPAA attempted to contact the website’s registrar and hosting provider to resolve the piracy, Donuts and MPAA said. Donuts will work with registrar partners to contact the website operator and seek additional evidence. If Donuts or a registrar partner finds a website engaged in illegal activity, the company may place a hold on or suspend the website for violating Donuts’ use policies, Donuts and MPAA said. Donuts “is committed to a healthy domain name environment and this is another step toward a safe and secure namespace,” said Executive Vice President Jon Nevett in the release.

Keller Rohrback is soliciting clients for a possible class-action complaint against the “smart interactivity” viewer-tracking feature of Vizio’s smart TVs, the Seattle law firm said in a Friday announcement. The feature tracks user information such as programs viewed and when they were watched, it said. “Once this data has been shared, advertisers can use this knowledge to target other devices through your IP address.” The feature may affect consumers who bought Vizio smart TVs as early as 2009, and on newer sets, the feature “is turned on by default at purchase and will reactivate if the Smart TV is ever reset to factory settings,” it said. “Laws such as the Video Privacy Protection Act and cable subscriber protections limit how companies can share information about the viewing habits of their customers.” The announcement asks consumers to contact the firm if they own a Vizio smart TV and “would like to know more about your rights.” Representatives of the firm didn’t comment. The firm was lead counsel for current and former Sony Pictures employees who sued the company over its 2014 data breach in a class action that’s now awaiting a final settlement (see 1506230061). Vizio representatives didn’t comment Monday. More than a dozen complaints have been filed since November over the viewer-tracking feature on Vizio smart TVs. Though Vizio has yet to mount a defense in any of the cases filed, one of the earliest complaints appears headed for private mediation (see 1601220033).

The HEVC Advance patent pool for H.265 technology put a brave face on founding member Technicolor's withdrawal from the group to license its H.265 patent portfolio directly to device makers. Technicolor believes doing so will “accelerate adoption” of the H.265 standard, the company said in a Wednesday statement. Contrary to an HEVC Advance statement that Technicolor’s recent acquisition of Cisco’s connected device business had direct bearing on its decision to withdraw, that wasn’t the case, a Technicolor spokesman emailed us Thursday. “Our decision to pursue direct licensing is mostly related” to the fact that “we do not support some decisions of the pool -- such as licensing content streaming,” he said. Moreover, "we initially thought that establishing a pool would help to avoid fragmentation," he said. "However, this has not been the case.” Since Dolby Labs, General Electric, Mitsubishi, Philips and Technicolor formed HEVC Advance in March (see 1504010051), “various players have delayed adoption of HEVC technologies and redirected their investment into alternative technologies,” Technicolor said in its withdrawal statement. “However, HEVC is today the best video compression technology to meet industry needs." HEVC Advance's statement said Technicolor's “acquisition of Cisco's set-top box business and their recent changes in management” appear to have made “bilateral licensing” a “better fit for Technicolor's current business dynamics.” That referred “primarily” to the recent departure of Stephane Rougeot, “who previously oversaw Technicolor's involvement with HEVC Advance,” Pete Moller, the patent pool’s CEO, emailed us.

American Library Association Program on Public Access to Information Director Carrie Russell praised as “good news” the Internet Policy Task Force’s white paper recommending legislation to amend guidance to courts for determining statutory damages in copyright infringement cases (see 1601280065). The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) and others have “lobbied for a review of copyright statutory damage framework for several years, so it is promising that the task force realized this was a problem,” Russell said Friday in an American Libraries blog post. “Whether Congress will act on this recommendation, time will tell.” ALA is a member of LCA. The IPTF’s recommendation against extending the first-sale doctrine to include digital transmissions “is not surprising” but the task force “took seriously” LCA’s input on e-book business models, saying “further action may be advisable” if libraries aren’t able to adequately serve patrons due to publishers’ restrictions, Russell said.

Book publishers Elsevier and Hachette, the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), a group of writers and the Copyright Alliance were among parties filing amicus briefs supporting the Authors Guild’s petition to the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari seeking review of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in the Google Books case, the guild said Tuesday. It petitioned the Supreme Court in December to review the 2nd Circuit’s ruling that the Google Books project to digitize portions of the world’s books is a “transformative” example of fair use, saying the 2nd Circuit’s ruling “fundamentally remakes” the fair use doctrine and conflicts with other courts’ fair use rulings. Copyright legal experts have told us they believe the Supreme Court is unlikely to grant the petition (see 1601040063). Elsevier and Hachette jointly argued in their brief that the 2nd Circuit took an “overly expansive view of the meaning and consequences of transformativeness, which displaces the statutory full factorial analysis Congress intended.” The 2nd Circuit’s ruling also “infringes and jeopardizes” authors’ exclusive rights to control their right to reproduce their copyrighted works, Elsevier and Hachette said. ASJA’s brief argued, as expected, that the 2nd Circuit failed to do a required “qualitative analysis of the portions of a work used by the defendant ... and instead it opted in favor of a quantitative analysis that makes no sense in the context of Google’s ‘snippet view’ product.” The 2nd Circuit also “erred by considering ‘transformativeness’ in a manner completely detached from ‘justification’ or fairness,” ASJA said. The Copyright Alliance said the 2nd Circuit’s ruling “employed a fair use analysis that is far removed from” the existing fair use precedent in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, which found commercial parody to be fair use. The ruling also “necessarily ignored numerous important interests and considerations, many of which were reflected” in the Copyright Office’s 2011 mass digitization study, the Copyright Alliance said. Stephen Sondheim and a coalition of other major authors and dramatists jointly argued that the fair use doctrine wasn’t intended “to permit a wealthy for-profit entity to digitize millions of works and to cut off authors’ licensing of their reproduction, distribution, and public display rights.” Google’s deadline for filing its opposition brief to the Supreme Court is March 1.

The Professional Photographers of America is backing proposals to create a “small claims option” for adjudicating copyright infringement cases as the association’s top copyright-related legislative priority for 2016, said Copyright and Government Affairs Coordinator Lindsey Forson in a Tuesday blog post. The Copyright Office and the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force have backed the creation of a separate small claims copyright court (see 1601280065). PPA CEO David Trust met with House IP Subcommittee Vice Chairman Doug Collins, R-Ga., and other House Judiciary members last week on copyright issues, Forson said. Several House Judiciary Committee members have indicated that addressing copyright small claims cases is among their “desired accomplishments” in the committee’s ongoing Copyright Act review, Forson said. PPA’s other copyright priorities for 2016 include modifying the current copyright registration process “to improve participation and functionality” and modernizing the CO.