The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) wants changes made to the Innovation Act (HR-9) -- patent reform legislation set to be voted on in the full House, said a letter to House leaders Wednesday. The letter, signed by ITI CEO Dean Garfield and sent to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., supported the bill but suggested language should be added to "require plaintiffs [in patent lawsuits] to identify each claim of each patent that is allegedly infringed." Garfield also urged the House to remove a portion of the legislation that would make changes to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's patent review proceedings, saying the changes would harm patent quality.

The market, not the patent pool, “ultimately determines” whether a patent pool strikes a “fair balance” between patent holders and patent users, and “reasonable royalties are key,” an MPEG LA spokesman emailed us. He was responding to HEVC Advance’s disclosure Wednesday of its patent pool royalty and pricing terms (see 1507220001) that were multitiered and much more expensive than what the MPEG LA patent pool charges for the use of the HEVC codec. Like the other patent pools that MPEG LA runs, the MPEG LA spokesman said, the goal of its HEVC patent pool “is to incorporate as much essential intellectual property as possible under one license for the benefit of the marketplace.” Participating licensees and patent holders “are required for a pool license to be widely accepted,” and to “achieve wide acceptance, both must receive value,” the MPEG LA spokesman said. “Patent holders must receive value in order to be willing to make their valuable intellectual property widely available under a pool license, and licensees must receive value in order to be willing to pay for its use.” MPEG LA manages licensing programs with 10,000 patents in 80 countries with 200 patent holders and 6,000 licensees, the representative said.

Nintendo didn't infringe on a patent held and asserted by Quintal Research Group, a U.S. District judge in Oakland, California, ruled. Quintal's infringement claim alleges the disputed patent addresses the positioning of buttons and controls on several of Nintendo's handheld gaming devices. Friday, Judge Saundra Armstrong granted Nintendo's request for summary judgment, saying Quintal failed to sufficiently prove the alleged infringement. “The result in this case continues to prove that Nintendo will vigorously defend its innovations against patent lawsuits and will not pay to settle cases simply to avoid litigation," Nintendo General Counsel Devon Pritchard said in a statement. Quintal didn't comment.

The U.K. IP Office sought comment by Aug. 17 on a proposal to raise the maximum penalty for online copyright infringement at a 10-year prison sentence. The proposal would equalize the penalty for online infringement with the current maximum penalty for physical infringement; the current maximum penalty for online infringement stands at a two-year sentence. U.K. government officials have been exploring raising the penalty for online infringement since 2005, with a 2006 independent review of the nation’s IP laws recommending equalizing the sentences because “the intention and impact of physical and online infringement are the same.” The maximum fine for online infringement has steadily increased since 2005 and is now open-ended. Increasing the possible prison sentence for online infringement would “have a deterrent effect on criminals seeking to make money in this way,” the IP Office said Friday.

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) member nations and nongovernmental organizations should strengthen IP rights in all new and existing treaties, said a coalition of 85 free market-oriented groups Monday in a joint letter to WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. The letter, organized by Americans for Tax Reform affiliate Property Right Alliance (PRA), urges the European Commission, WIPO, other intergovernmental organizations and NGOs to protect IP rights in all trade agreements, protect IP rights on the Internet and enhance IP rights as a tool to promote free markets. “Advanced societies have long understood that by protecting the proprietary rights of artists, authors, entrepreneurs, innovators, and inventors, they were promoting the greater public welfare,” the PRA-led coalition said in the letter. “The continued protection of these fundamental rights is essential to global innovation, creativity and competitiveness.” The coalition wants the letter to “encourage the leaders of international organizations and governments to work together to promote the rule of law and protect strong IP rights as the engine of fair, prosperous and transparent societies,” PRA Executive Director Lorenzo Montanari said in a statement. “Ensuring that intellectual property rights are respected and protected in every nation will promote prosperity, innovation and creativity around the globe.”

Google released an updated version of its Google Patents tool, a company blog post said Thursday. The revised search tool contains an updated classification tool, using cooperative patent classification codes to classify everything found in Google Scholar, the company said. It said that Google Patents now contains a simplified user interface and the option to search for foreign patent documents using English keywords.

Abuse of the patent litigation system by patent assertion entities (PAEs) “is the most significant problem facing the patent system and innovation more generally,” Mark MacCarthy, vice president-public policy at the Software & Information Industry Association, wrote to House leadership Thursday urging support for the Innovation Act (HR-9). “Patent trolls do not innovate, make or sell anything, but exist simply to buy patents from others for the sole purpose of suing legitimate businesses of all sizes and kinds for alleged patent infringement, leveraging the very high cost of defending against such lawsuits to obtain ‘hold up’ settlements,” MacCarthy said. "Action needs to be taken now to stop these abusive tactics.” MacCarthy cautioned lawmakers not to be taken in by “a hail-Mary mudslinging campaign” mounted by HR-9 opponents and “designed to obfuscate the purpose and effect of the Innovation Act.” Statements in that campaign that “China loves” HR-9 or that “inventors fear it” are “nothing more than scare tactics from groups that have no substantively compelling arguments on which to base their opposition,” he said. An American Conservative Union-led ad blitz launched last Monday through Washington-area newspapers urged defeat of HR-9 on the grounds it will harm American inventors and small businesses.

Chairmen and executives from the nation's largest Internet companies, including Google, Etsy, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Yahoo, submitted a joint letter Thursday to House leadership urging the passage of the Innovation Act (HR-9). "As inventors ourselves, we support the Innovation Act because it strikes a reasonable compromise between protecting patent holders' rights and removing the threat of frivolous patent troll litigation," the letter said. The reforms in HR-9 are "not silver bullets," the letter said, but they "help remove factors that make the patent troll business model a no-risk, high-reward enterprise. The Innovation Act is a positive step in the right direction for our economy."

Correction: The Music. Innovation. Consumers. (MIC) Coalition hadn't taken a position on the Fair Play Fair Pay Act (HR-1733) (see 1507140071).

NPR's Policy and Representation Division left the Music. Innovation. Consumers. (MIC) Coalition Tuesday amid ongoing pressure from advocates of the Fair Play Fair Pay Act (HR-1733) to leave the group. CEA, Google and NAB are members of the MIC Coalition. NAB and some other MIC Coalition members oppose HR-1733, but the MIC Coalition itself hasn’t taken a position on the bill. HR-1733, introduced in April, would require most terrestrial radio stations to begin paying performance royalties and would require digital broadcasters to begin paying royalties for pre-1972 sound recordings. The bill also would require satellite broadcasters to pay royalties at market rates (see 1504160050). The Content Creators Coalition (c3), which urged NPR Monday to leave the MIC Coalition, said in a statement Tuesday that "withdrawing was the right thing to do once NPR understood the negative impact its membership in the lobbying group had on artists and their interests." MusicFIRST, which had also urged NPR to leave the MIC Coalition, also praised the decision. "We applaud NPR for its willingness to listen and engage in a dialogue with musicians’ advocates," said MusicFIRST Executive Director Ted Kalo in a statement. “And we commend NPR’s decision to leave the MIC Coalition, separating itself from both the Coalition and its anti-artist agenda.” MIC Coalition “members ensure that American music consumers can access music through platforms, venues and innovations of their choice; that music gets heard in legal and accessible ways and that artists get paid for their work,” the group said in a statement. “It's unfortunate that some continue to try to mischaracterize that mission, and we invite all stakeholders to instead join this most important conversation about how we together create a transparent music ecosystem that benefits all of us.”