The Copyright Office's online eCO registration system will be offline for portions of Saturday and Sunday, the Library of Congress said Wednesday. The registration system will be offline 6-8:30 p.m. Saturday and between 10 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m. Sunday, LOC said.

Securus accused Global Tel*Link (GTL) of making “grossly inaccurate” statements after the Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) granted GTL's requests to invalidate two of Securus' patents. In a Tuesday news release, Securus said GTL issued its own news release (see 1509140069) containing "some clearly misleading and inaccurate statements" about the PTAB decision and the extent to which it affected Securus' patent portfolio. Securus said it plans to appeal the PTAB decisions, and the rulings didn't invalidate all of the company's call processing patents. Securus also denied GTL's claims that it's a patent predator and not an innovator, and had patented material invented by others. "Any suggestion that Securus patented what others were doing is wrong," Securus said. "GTL effectively admitted Securus' patents were new and novel and the PTAB did not undermine this."

RIAA disagrees with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling Monday in Lenz v. Universal, a spokeswoman said in an email, speaking on behalf of Universal Music Group (UMG). A three-judge 9th Circuit panel ruled that U.S. District Court in San Francisco was justified in ruling against motions from UMG and other parties for a summary judgment in the case. The 9th Circuit’s ruling also said the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) “requires copyright holders to consider fair use before sending a takedown notification (see 1509140070). RIAA, one of the parties supporting UMG in the case, disagrees with the 9th Circuit’s “conclusion about the DMCA and the burden the court places upon copyright holders before sending takedown notices,” a spokeswoman said. “But we are pleased that the Ninth Circuit made it clear that a court may not second guess a copyright owner’s good faith belief that the fair use does not excuse infringing conduct.”

The Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued written decisions granting Global Tel*Link's requests to invalidate two patents held by Securus Technologies, GTL said in a news release Monday. The rulings end existing patent infringement claims against GTL made by Securus and prevent any new suits related to the patents, GTL said. In one ruling, PTAB said Securus made incorrect statements to patent officials while seeking approval for one of the invalidated patents, the news release said. Securus didn't comment.

Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) generated more than $1 billion revenue during FY 2015, which ended June 30, the music rights management company said Thursday. BMI said its FY 2015 revenue total is the highest in the company's history and the “most public performance revenue generated for songwriters, composers and publishers by any music rights organization in the world.” BMI's revenue from digital performances rose 65 percent from FY 2014 to more than $100 million. U.S. media licensing generated $484 million revenue, while licensing to U.S. bars, hotels and other facilities totaled $137 million, BMI said. An additional $292 million revenue came from international licenses, the company said. BMI distributed $877 million to its affiliated songwriters, composers and music publishers -- up almost 4.5 percent from FY 2014. BMI CEO Mike O’Neill in a news release said the results are "even more impressive when you consider the negative impact to our international revenues brought on by the strengthening dollar.”

NAB and Sirius XM were among the nine entities or groups of law professors to file proposed amicus briefs with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals through Thursday on behalf of Pandora in the company's appeal of a February U.S. District Court ruling in Los Angeles. The lower court said Pandora had to pay performance royalties on pre-1972 recordings owned by Flo & Eddie, who own the copyright to The Turtles' “Happy Together” and the rest of that band's music library. Sirius XM and the other six filers on behalf of Pandora argued that District Judge Philip Gutierrez incorrectly interpreted California copyright law. The other pro-Pandora filers included the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and three groups of law school professors. Pandora and six of the nine filers previously filed in the 2nd Circuit on Sirius XM's behalf in that company's appeal of earlier U.S. District Court rulings in New York that relied on state copyright law in finding Flo & Eddie had a right to performance royalties on the Turtles' pre-1972 recordings (see 1508060052). Gutierrez essentially said the statute is "a living servitude on not only intangible products but also previously sold goods, one which would grow over time as new rights evolved,” CCIA said in its proposed brief. Gutierrez's “creation of a performance right in contravention of the Legislature’s plain intent violates the settled principle that where, as here, the declaration of a right would dramatically alter the common law and affect the interests of competing stakeholders, it must be a matter of legislative judgment and discretion,” Sirius XM said in its proposed brief. “Even assuming that California may regulate the use of pre-1972 sound recordings within its own borders, it cannot regulate in such a manner that prohibits the use of such sound recordings elsewhere in the nation,” CCIA said. “In such circumstances, the burden on interstate commerce -- including potential commerce involving members of amicus CCIA -- would be 'clearly excessive in relation to the putative local benefits.'” Gutierrez's ruling “creates an unbounded set of exclusive rights never recognized by California or Congress, and thus risks creating problematic restrictions on valuable speech activities,” Public Knowledge said in its proposed brief.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation “continues to call” on officials in nations considering the Trans-Pacific Partnership “to renounce misguided plans to extend the length of copyright by 20 years in half of the 12 TPP-negotiating countries,” EFF Senior Global Policy Analyst Jeremy Malcolm said Tuesday in a blog post. The extension appears inevitable because it has been included in all U.S. free trade agreements since the North American Free Trade Agreement and is facing “little to no opposition” among negotiating countries, Malcolm said. “Even so, we can't simply sit back and accept this, because what's wrong is wrong. … Copyright term extension has never been about economics, it has been about placating a big content sector that takes pride in its ability to demand, and to receive, copyright laws that benefit nobody but themselves.” EFF “won't be giving up this fight and neither should those countries. Either we'll convince them to reject the unwarranted extension of the copyright term by 20 years, or we'll have given them fair warning: if they press ahead and include this term in the agreement regardless of the public's wishes, we will together rise up and defeat the TPP as a whole, just as we defeated ACTA [Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement] and SOPA [Stop Online Piracy Act] before it,” Malcolm said.

“The Copyright Office’s online copyright registration system, eCO, remains offline until further notice,” the Library of Congress said Thursday. The data center was shut down Aug. 28 for a scheduled annual power outage to allow routine maintenance, but the library hasn't been able to restore access to eCO and other CO systems since it attempted to reopen the data center Aug. 30 (see 1509010062), it said. “Until service is restored, you will be unable to use the eCO system to file a copyright registration, and Office staff may be unable to access Office records.”

Rightscorp, a data and analytic services provider for artists and owners of copyrighted property, said it launched a Popcorn Time Protection (PTP) service for content owners who want to prevent unauthorized streaming of their content via Popcorn Time. “Popcorn Time aka ‘Netflix for pirates’ is an illegal BitTorent-based software application that has become one of the most popular ways to illegally stream movies and TV shows,” said the company in a news release Thursday. “Our new Popcorn Time Protection service is the only scalable solution for this major threat to Hollywood,” said Rightscorp CEO Christopher Sabec. “Popcorn Time is unaffected by domain blocking and by [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] takedown notices.”

The Office of the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator seeks comment by Oct. 16 to help craft the next iteration of its Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement. The plan, which is administered by the Office of the Coordinator, aims to put in place the mechanisms to reduce the supply of fraudulent goods and other intellectual property infringement, while also assisting other countries in cracking down on illegal operations, the Office of Management and Budget said in Tuesday's Federal Register. Through the plan, the U.S. aims to prioritize U.S. resources for "countries where programs can be carried out most effectively with the greatest impact on reducing the number of infringing products imported into the United States, while also protecting the intellectual property rights of U.S. rights holders and the interests of U.S. persons otherwise harmed by infringements in other countries," said OMB. Following two previous three-year versions, this plan will last 2016-19. OMB requested “input and recommendations” on the broad effort to crack down on IP infringement, including through legislation, presidential action and regulatory changes, “as well as ideas for improving any of the existing voluntary private-sector initiatives and for establishing new voluntary private-sector initiatives.”