The Copyright Office seeks comment by Feb. 16 on what provisions​ in existing U.S. copyright law “are implicated by the ubiquity of software in everyday products, and the effect of copyright law on technological advancements in such products.” Reply comments are due March 18, the CO said in Tuesday's Federal Register. The CO said it's doing the study in response to a request from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. They sought the study in October, days before the CO and Library of Congress released 10 exemptions to Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 1201 (see 1510230036). Topics the CO wants to study include whether the application of copyright law to software in everyday products “enables or frustrates innovation and creativity in the design, distribution and legitimate uses of new products and innovative services,” the office said. The CO said it's also seeking information on whether legitimate business models for copyright owners “could be improved or undermined by changes to copyright law in this area.” The study isn't “intended to examine or address more general questions about software and copyright protection,” the CO said.

The Patent and Trademark Office Tuesday released its FY 2015 performance and accountability report (PAR), which detailed the agency's financial and performance measurement results and compared them to the previous fiscal year's. The PTO finished FY 15, which ended Sept. 30, 2.7 percentage points, or $76,615, ahead of its FY 2014 amount in total assets, and increased total earned revenue by 1.9 percentage points to $3.07 million, the report said. The agency also increased its federal personnel in FY 15 by 217 employees. In its performance measurements, the PTO didn't meet its target goal of a 16.4-month average first-action patent pendency, finishing with an average of 17.3 months, or its goal of a 83-91 patent quality composite score -- finishing FY15 with a score of 42.9. The PTO also failed to meet its goal of training 6,300 foreign government officials on best practices to protect and enforce intellectual property, it said. The PTO met or exceeded several of its target objectives, including average total patent pendency, average first-action trademark pendency, total average trademark pendency and exceptional office action, the report said. "While the PAR is a record of our achievements, it is also an honest discussion of the challenges we face as an agency moving forward in FY 2016," PTO Chief Financial Officer Tony Scardino said in a blog post Tuesday. Scardino said the PTO will continue efforts in the current fiscal year in managing the transition to a "steady-state operation" as the patent activity comes closer to achieving its pendency and inventory targets and establishing an Office of the Deputy Commissioner.

Nearly 2.7 million patent applications were filed globally in 2014, a 4.5 percent rise from 2013, for the fifth straight year of increases, the World Intellectual Property Organization said in a Monday report. China drove much of the 2014 growth, as “application activity in China outstripped the combined total in its next-closest followers,” the U.S. and Japan, WIPO said. Chinese patent offices accepted about 928,200 filings in 2014, followed by the U.S. (578,800), Japan (326,000), South Korea (210,300) and the European Patent Office (152,700), it said. China is on pace to become the first to accept a million applications in a single year, it said. China also led the world last year in rate of growth (12.5 percent), followed by the EPO (3.2 percent), South Korea (2.8 percent) and the U.S. (1.3 percent), it said. Japan had a 0.7 percent decline, it said. U.S. applicants filed the most patent applications abroad (224,400), followed by Japan (200,000) and Germany (105,600), WIPO said. Chinese applicants filed relatively few applications abroad -- only around 36,700, it said.

The Copyright Royalty Board will issue its ruling on the webcasting rate-setting proceeding Wednesday, the Copyright Office said Monday. The ruling, which will decide the statutory royalty rates that Pandora and other noninteractive online radio services will pay between 2016 and 2020, has been difficult for stakeholders to predict given the wide range of proposed rates and few clear signs from stakeholders’ interactions with the CRB (see 1512110064). The CRB will post the royalty rates online Wednesday but will initially send its full written determination only to parties that participated in the proceeding and Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante pending determination of what information the CRB will redact for public release, the CO said. The rates set will take effect Jan. 1.

The Copyright Alliance urged consumers to exercise caution to avoid buying products that contain counterfeit or pirated content. “In addition to inadvertently purchasing a dud gift for someone special, those who fail to heed these warnings may find that they receive unwanted ‘gifts’ of their own -- such as malware, identity theft or stolen credit cards,” CEO Keith Kupferschmid said in a Thursday news release. Consumers should always be aware that “if a product price seems too good to be true, it probably is,” the alliance said. “Be especially careful about extreme bargains on software, music, movies and video games.” The group also suggested consumers buy products only from secure websites, review product packaging for glaring errors as a way of identifying counterfeit products and consult guides on legitimate online retailers.

Pandora said it signed a multiyear licensing agreement with independent publisher Songs Music Publishing to cover Songs' entire music catalog. Pandora didn't disclose the specific terms of the agreement but said Tuesday it “allows SONGS to obtain its goal of delivering improved performance royalties for its songwriters while Pandora will benefit from greater rate certainty and the ability to add new flexibility to the company's product offering over time.” The licensing agreement “creates business benefits for Pandora, while modernizing and equalizing compensation for SONGS and its songwriters in the U.S.,” Pandora said. “Now is the time to move past the over-regulation of songwriter rights and towards a market-based approach to streaming music,” said Songs CEO Matt Pincus in a Pandora news release. “This agreement is a big step forward in a long conversation about fair and equitable compensation for all songwriters and publishers.”

The U.S. International Trade Commission voted to open a Section 337 Tariff Act investigation (337-TA-973) into allegations that Jawbone UP fitness trackers infringe Fitbit patents, the agency said in a Dec. 1 announcement. Fitbit requested the investigation in a Nov. 2 complaint, asking for a limited exclusion order and cease and desist order banning import and sale of the infringing fitness trackers. Jawbone representatives didn’t comment Monday.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Friday that a U.S. District Court in Sioux City, Iowa, was correct in deciding Leigh Leaverton, one of several people sued by Killer Joe copyright owner Killer Joe Nevada for downloading that film via a BitTorrent computer program, wasn't entitled to attorney’s fees after Killer Joe Nevada moved to dismiss its suit against Leaverton. Killer Joe Nevada moved to dismiss with prejudice after Leaverton denied downloading Killer Joe. Leaverton had sought a declaratory judgment that she hadn’t infringed on Killer Joe Nevada’s copyright and attorney’s fees in the case, arguing that awarding attorney’s fees would deter Killer Joe Nevada and others from suing subscribers based on identification from an IP address without further investigation. U.S. District Court Judge Mark Bennett granted Killer Joe Nevada’s dismissal request in 2014 and denied both Leaverton’s counterclaim for declaratory judgment and her request for attorney’s fees, which Leaverton appealed on a claim that it was an abuse of the district court’s discretion. Although all parties agree Leaverton is the prevailing party in the case, attorney’s fees “are not awarded to the prevailing party automatically or as a matter of course,” said Appeals Judge Duane Benton in his opinion for the three-judge 8th Circuit panel. Judges James Loken and Bobby Shepard also affirmed the district court ruling. “Awarding attorney’s fees to a prevailing party ‘is a matter for the district court’s “equitable discretion,” to be exercised in an evenhanded manner by considering factors such as whether the lawsuit was frivolous or unreasonable, the losing litigant’s motivations, the need in a particular case to compensate or deter, and the purposes of the Copyright Act,’” the 8th Circuit said. The district court didn’t abuse its discretion by saying Killer Joe Nevada’s lawsuit and identification of Leaverton as a defendant were reasonable since Leaverton didn’t cite any binding authority that a copyright lawsuit “based on an infringer’s IP address is frivolous or unreasonable,” the 8th Circuit said. The district court also didn’t abuse its discretion by failing to explicitly consider Leaverton’s financial status in its ruling and by deciding Killer Joe Nevada lacked improper motivation for suing Leaverton, the 8th Circuit said.

The type of downloadable security supported by TiVo in the report from the FCC Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee would open up retail set-top box manufacturers that use a guide combined with a DVR to being sued by the company for patent infringement, said NCTA in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-64. It responded to Media Bureau questions about the recordability of multichannel video programming distributor content. “Some observers have noted that TiVo is seeking to ‘preserve its lucrative patent business’ by increasing manufacturer exposure to its patent claims,” NCTA said. The app-based approach favored by MVPDs isn’t as exposed to patent lawsuits, NCTA said. Also in a blog post Wednesday, NCTA said the set-top security/navigation integration ban will sunset Friday under the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization. “The Integration Ban was an unnecessary technology mandate from the late 1990’s that cost billions of dollars with no real consumer benefit,” NCTA said: “The STELAR legislation approved overwhelmingly by a bipartisan Congress is significant because it recognizes that innovation in the television industry shouldn’t be held back by a mandate that penalizes one sector (cable operators) while others are free to experiment.” The ban’s sunset doesn’t mean cable companies will stop supporting CableCARDs, the association said. “In the end, we want customers to access their favorite content however they want. And if that means supporting CableCARDs to decrypt video signals in retail devices, then that’s exactly what we’ll do.” TiVo had no immediate comment Wednesday.

The Copyright Office’s Public Information Office extended phone business hours on a trial basis through Dec. 31 “to assess the effect of extended hours on stakeholders outside” the Eastern time zone, the office said Monday. CO staff will field phone inquiries 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, but the CO’s in-person office hours will remain the same throughout the pilot period. The CO still will be closed on Christmas Day. The CO said it will “determine whether to adjust its business hours on a long-term basis” after the pilot experiment ends.