The Copyright Office (CO) anticipates releasing its ruling on proposed exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 1201’s ban on the circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs) Oct. 28, a spokeswoman confirmed Thursday. CO officials have been considering 27 proposed Section 1201 exemptions (see 1505140070 and 1505260050), including a new cellphone unlocking exemption and several other jailbreaking exemptions. A proposed exemption that would allow security researchers to circumvent TPMs on vehicle software has drawn renewed interest in recent weeks following the EPA’s claim in late September that Volkswagen had used software in its diesel vehicles between 2008 and this year to reduce emissions toxicity during emissions tests (see 1509220060).

Recent Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) rulings adopting two separate settlements involving SoundExchange “wrap up some aspects” of CRB’s ongoing 2016-2020 webcasting rate-setting proceeding, while a separate Copyright Office ruling on the admissibility of direct license terms as possible benchmarks “could affect aspects of the proceeding not resolved by the CRB’s orders,” Fletcher Heald lawyer Kevin Goldberg said in a blog post Wednesday. CRB adopted most of an agreement in late September between SoundExchange and College Broadcasters Inc. for the 2016-2020 term that sets the rates for digital performances of sound recordings by noncommercial educational webcasters (see 1509290050). CRB adopted a partial agreement last week between SoundExchange and a group of public radio stations led by NPR and CPB that mostly leaves in place rates and terms from the 2011-2015 term. That partial agreement allows public radio to continue to directly administer arrangements, “so eligible stations should be on the lookout for direct notice(s) from NPR or an NPR affiliated entity for guidance,” Goldberg said. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante ruled in late September that the CRB isn’t prohibited from using Pandora’s past direct licensing deals with independent music label rights consortium Merlin and independent label Naxos as possible benchmarks for the 2016-2020 webcasting proceeding (see 1509210054). That ruling is likely to benefit webcasters since Pandora’s direct license deals “stand out as actual, concrete examples of what a willing buyer and willing seller in this marketplace would agree on -- in, fact, have agreed on -- as the actual value for digital performance of a sound recording,” Goldberg said. “In that regard they may provide the CRB more persuasive evidence of the proper rates to be set.”

The Patent and Trademark Office unveiled its newly developed icons for intellectual property, intended to "help spread awareness about IP while engaging with the public," Deputy Director Russ Slifer said in an agency blog post Friday. The 19 symbols, developed through the PTO Iconathon workshop, were designed to universally represent IP, and include icons for concepts such as infringement, invention, patent pending, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and trademark, said Slifer.

The Copyright Alliance will become a “superhero for the copyright community,” new Executive Director Keith Kupferschmid said Wednesday in a blog post. “It astonishes me how the perceived divide” between the copyright and technology communities “is so often exaggerated and emphasized,” Kupferschmid said, noting his experience working with both communities in his former role as Software & Information Industry Association general counsel. “I do not perceive the copyright and technology communities as warring factions. Both groups rely on copyright to promote and protect their creativity and innovation and both depend on innovation and technology to develop different models for making these new creations and inventions available to the public to enjoy.” The Copyright Alliance should “become a clearinghouse for copyright information” for a diverse group of stakeholders, Kupferschmid said. The group should “assist these creators by providing services that will help them register their works with the Copyright Office (CO) and to enforce their rights against those who violate them,” he said. The Copyright Alliance should also make its primary policy focus the modernization of the CO since it's the main issue that all stakeholders agree on, Kupferschmid said.

The Copyright Royalty Board published final regulations setting the rates for digital performances of sound recording by noncommercial educational webcasters, said Monday's Federal Register. The rates cover Jan.1, 2016, to Dec. 31, 2020, the copyright royalty judges (CRJ) said. “The agreement reached voluntarily between SoundExchange and CBI [College Broadcasters, Inc.] establishes a reasonable basis for setting statutory terms and rates for noncommercial educational webcasters.” The Register of Copyrights also issued a memorandum opinion that CRJs are allowed to consider direct licensing agreements that include terms similar to the 2009 webcaster settlement agreements as benchmarks or corroborative evidence. SoundExchange had argued such agreements couldn't be considered by CRJs, while broadcasters wanted the CRJs to be able to consider such agreements when setting rates (see 1507210071).

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the Senate Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship Act (S-1137) would cost the federal government $3 million during the period of 2016-2020, and increase operating costs at the Patent and Trademark Office by about $70 million in the same period. The CBO said that enacting the bill would not affect direct spending, and costs for public and private entities to comply with the mandate would fall "well below" the annual intergovernmental and private-sector thresholds of $77 million and $154 million, respectively, in 2015.

The Copyright Office's eCO online copyright registration system will be offline beginning at 5 p.m. Eastern Friday for a system upgrade, the CO said. The eCO system is expected to go back online by 3 p.m. Sunday, the CO said.

Public Knowledge praised the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles for the court's Tuesday ruling that Warner/Chappell's copyright claim on the “Happy Birthday to You” song is invalid. U.S. District Judge George King ruled that Warner/Chappell and other companies that previously owned the right to the song didn't have a valid claim because the original copyright claim filed in 1935 by the Clayton F. Summy Co. pertained only to certain piano arrangements of the song rather than the song itself (see 1509230072). The ruling “is a welcome victory for the public,” said Public Knowledge Policy Counsel Raza Panjwani in a news release on Tuesday. “Although this decision does not mean that 'Happy Birthday' is unquestionably in the public domain, it dismantles Warner/Chappell’s unfounded claims of ownership.” The district court's decision “also raises serious concerns as to how much of our culture remains under lock and key on the basis of flimsy or barely credible claims of ownership,” Panjwani said. “Thanks to multiple extensions of copyright term length, copyrights have remained in effect while the records that can definitively answer questions of ownership or public domain status moulder away.”

The HEVC Advance patent pool for H.265 intellectual property licensing took the opportunity of announcing its first new member to disclose it's getting some industry pushback to its plan to charge high royalty fees on the licensing of H.265 content and devices. HEVC Advance is "actively soliciting input from market participants and considering adjustments to arrive at a royalty structure that enables continued and rapid adoption of HEVC and brings the associated benefits to stakeholders within the media and technology industries," the company said Wednesday. “We have received significant market feedback, particularly on content fees, and will adjust fees to support widespread use of HEVC,” CEO Pete Moller said in a statement. That HEVC Advance will charge a royalty on HEVC content and come to market with a high-priced, two-tier structure for royalty treatment in different parts of the world are but two of many stark differences that set it apart from the alternative HEVC patent pool run by MPEG LA when HEVC Advance announced its licensing regime in late July (see 1507220001). In contrast to HEVC Advance, MPEG LA charges only a 20-cents-per-unit hardware royalty across the board for the use of HEVC codecs with no delineation for the type of device, and allows a hardware supplier licensee its first 100,000 units royalty-free, said a summary of the HEVC license agreement posted this month at the MPEG LA website. MPEG LA also caps a supplier’s royalty obligation at $25 million a year, the summary said. As for HEVC Advance's new member, it's MediaTek, the prominent manufacturer of systems-on-a-chip semiconductors for mobile and home entertainment devices. “The addition of MediaTek will substantially enhance the value of the HEVC Advance patent pool for our customers and is a significant step in realizing our goal of bringing HEVC to the global market by providing an efficient and transparent means to acquire necessary and high quality patent rights, at scale, in a fair, reasonable and balanced manner,” said Moller. “We continue to make great strides in building a substantial portfolio of high-quality HEVC essential patents available for license as we march toward our official launch in the fourth quarter.”

Warner/Chappell Music and other companies that have claimed copyright since 1935 on the “Happy Birthday” song have never actually held a valid claim, U.S. District Judge George King ruled late Tuesday in Los Angeles. Filmmaker Jennifer Nelson and other plaintiffs had jointly challenged Warner/Chappell's copyright of the song in 2013 after the company sought royalties for all performances of the song for commercial purposes. Warner/Chappell had charged Nelson $1,500 for a synchronization license to use “Happy Birthday” in a documentary about the song. Warner/Chappell has claimed copyright on “Happy Birthday” since 1988, following its purchase of the Beech Tree Group, successor to original copyright claimant Clayton F. Summy Co. Summy bought the rights to “Good Morning to You” from original composers Mildred Hill and Patty Smith Hill. The original 1935 copyright claim that Summy filed in 1935 pertains only to certain piano arrangements of “Happy Birthday's” music, originally titled “Good Morning to You,” rather than the general song's melody or its lyrics, King said in his ruling. There's “no one, really, who can claim an ownership” to the “Happy Birthday” song since Mildred Hill and Patty Smith Hill “didn't convey the rights to Summy Co.,” King said, noting that it's unclear whether the Hill sisters still held common-law copyright over the lyrics by the time they sold the rights to Summy in 1893. The alternative “Happy Birthday” lyrics to “Good Morning to You” appeared in songbooks only beginning in 1911, when those lyrics appeared without an authorship credit. “A reasonable fact finder could also find that the Happy Birthday lyrics were written by someone else” and that Patty Smith Hill's claim to authorship of the alternative lyrics “was a post hoc attempt to take credit for the words that had long since become more famous and popular than the ones she wrote for the classic melody,” King said. Nelson and other plaintiffs have sought restitution of all licensing fees that Warner/Chappell has collected for use of “Happy Birthday” since 1988, though a spokesman for the plaintiffs said that issue will be resolved later. Warner/Chappell said it's “looking at the court's lengthy opinion and considering our options.”