Congress needs to fix “copyright’s draconian, unpredictable civil penalties,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog post Wednesday. “High and unpredictable penalties can make relying on fair use a game of financial Russian roulette for artists and innovators.” EFF promoted Fair Use Week, which includes universities, Authors Alliance and the R Street Institute as participants. “Congress could help fix these problems by clarifying that statutory damages should never apply to a copyright user who relies on a fair use defense in good faith, even if the defense is unsuccessful,” EFF said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday unanimously approved Michelle Lee to lead the Patent and Trademark Office. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he was pleased that the committee unanimously approved Lee’s appointment, but said he was “disappointed” she was not “more forthcoming during the confirmation process” when asked about patent troll legislation: “This is a critical problem that demands an effective legislative solution, and the USPTO Director must be actively involved in that process.” Hatch encouraged Lee to be more forthcoming if any other Senator asked her a question before her appointment to lead the PTO is put to a full Senate vote. Information Technology Industry Council CEO Dean Garfield urged the full Senate to quickly approve Lee’s nomination, saying the office “plays a critical role in advancing innovation because intellectual property is the foundation for the new products and cutting-edge technologies that are growing our economy and transforming our world.”

Apple was ordered to pay $532.9 million because its iTunes software infringed three patents owned by Smartflash, said a verdict from U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas. The case, filed in May 2013, alleged that Apple’s software infringed three patents held by Smartflash and originally Patrick Racz and Herman-ard Hulst, who signed the patents over to the company in 2002. The jury ruled Apple’s software infringed on those patents, and did so willfully. Apple said it refuses to pay another company for its own ideas and has been left with no choice but to take the fight up through the court system, in a statement Wednesday. It said Smartflash "makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented." The patents covered a portable data carrier for storing data and managing access to the data via payment information and/or use status rules, court documents said. They also cover a computer network that serves data and manages access to data by, for example, validating payment information. The complaint said the parts that infringe on Smartflash’s patents include the software components responsible for buying digital content or applications from iTunes, the software components responsible for providing digital content or apps upon payment validation, the software components that provide in-app payment functionality, the software components that provide in-app advertising functionality, the software components that store payment distribution information indicating to whom payments should be made for purchased digital content or apps, and the software components that install, on a computer or server, any version of iTunes that can access the iTunes Store, any version of the App Store app, or any version of the Mac App Store. A lawyer for Smartflash didn't comment.

Nearly 150 U.S. universities wrote Congress expressing concern over patent reform legislation. They said a large portion of the legislation goes “well beyond what is needed to address the bad actions of a small number of patent holders, and would instead make it more difficult and expensive for patent holders to defend their rights in good faith.” Mandatory fee-shifting and involuntary joinder are the most concerning because they would “make the legitimate defense of patent rights excessively risky and thus weaken the university technology transfer process,” the letter said. The patent system needs to provide strong protection for inventions to enable universities to license them to private sector enterprises, it said. Congress should take these concerns into consideration when assessing changes to the patent laws, it said. “It is imperative that any legislation avoid sweeping changes that would weaken our overall patent system and hinder the flow of groundbreaking advances from university research to the private sector, which catalyzes economic growth, creates jobs, and improves the lives of all Americans.” The letter was sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa; ranking member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.; and ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich. Among the signers were Boston University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation released a white paper Monday outlining its vision to fix the U.S. patent system, said an EFF blog post. The 37-page white paper calls for six legislative “reforms,” including “ensuring there are inexpensive and efficient tools for challenging the validity of issued patents” and “passing a comprehensive patent reform bill, such as the Innovation Act” (HR-9) (see 1502120043). “The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is issuing far too many weak and overbroad patents, particularly on software," EFF staff attorney Vera Ranieri said in the blog post. "Instead of promoting innovation, these patents become hidden landmines for companies that bring new products to market."

The Society of European Stage Authors and Composers agreed with the U.S. Copyright Office’s recent music licensing study proposal that “sound recordings and musical works should be valued on a more consistent basis,” CEO John Josephson said in a news release Wednesday. The CO’s study, released Feb. 5, backed full federal protection of pre-1972 sound recordings and terrestrial broadcasters paying public performance royalties (see 1502050055). “We agree with the Copyright Office’s recognition of the need to assure fair compensation to creators, the necessity for the licensing process to be more efficient and the demand for market participants to have access to authoritative data to identify and license sound recordings and musical works,” Josephson said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation asked a U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, to invalidate what the digital rights group calls a "junk patent," said an EFF news release. It said EFF partnered with Durie Tangri to defend Bytephoto.com from what EFF described as an “outrageous patent suit from a company that claims to hold the rights to online competitions on social networks where users vote for the winner.” Bytephoto.com has hosted user-submitted photos and competitions for best photo since 2003, EFF said. In 2007, Garfum.com applied for a patent on the “method of sharing multi-media content among users in a global computer network,” and filed an infringement lawsuit against Bytephoto.com in September 2014. EFF argued that “this kind of abstract idea using generic computer technology cannot be patented” and asked that the patent be declared invalid, in a motion to dismiss, the release said. "It's part of our job to identify stupid patents and to try to get rid of them, and this is one of the silliest I have ever seen," said EFF Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer. "Our client has been running 'vote-for-your-favorite-photo' polls for years, just for fun and the love of photography,” said Nazer, who's also EFF's Mark Cuban chair to eliminate stupid patents. “The idea that you could patent this abstract idea -- and then demand a settlement to go away -- goes against both patent law and common sense," he said. "Patents like this improperly interfere with the ability of people to use the Internet to do things they've been doing in the analog world for generations,” said EFF staff attorney Vera Ranieri. This patent is “interfering with the age-old tradition of like-minded enthusiasts getting together to celebrate their hobbies," Ranieri said: "Demanding a payout for infringement on an obviously bad patent like this one isn't just unfair,” it also is “a chilling effect against those who would want to use the Internet to expand their community." Garfum.com didn't comment.

The U.S. and Japan joined the Hague system for the global registration of industrial designs, adding "two of the world’s biggest economies" to a registry “that supports creators worldwide,” the World Intellectual Property Organization said in an announcement Friday. According to statistics from WIPO, which runs the registry, 8.2 percent of all design applications worldwide in 2013 were filed by applicants from the U.S., and 4.7 percent by applicants in Japan, the agency said. WIPO hopes other countries will consider joining the Hague system now that the U.S. and Japan have, it said. WIPO touts the 64-country-strong Hague system as offering a cost-effective means of registering industrial designs in a large number of countries, “providing design owners broad geographical protection of their designs with a minimum of formality and expense.” A Hague registration “produces the same effect of a grant of protection in each of the designated contracting parties as if the design had been registered directly with each national office, unless protection is refused by the national office,” WIPO said.

Language in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement “poses massive threats to users in a dizzying number of ways,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation Global Policy Analyst Maira Sutton in a blog post Thursday. All nations that sign the TPP will have to “accept the United States’ excessive copyright terms,” she said, as the U.S. exports “bad rules to other nations.” The broad definition of what constitutes a criminal violation of copyright could result in people being convicted of a crime for even noncommercial activities, Sutton said. “Fans who distribute subtitles to foreign movies or anime, or archivists and librarians who preserve and upload old books, videos, games, or music, could go to jail or face huge fines for their work,” she said. “Someone who makes a remix film and puts it online could be under threat.” The TPP also contains digital rights management “anti-circumvention provisions that will make it a crime to tinker with, hack, re-sell, preserve, and otherwise control any number of digital files and devices that you own,” according to the latest leak of the TPP in May 2014, Sutton said. The TPP encourages “ISPs to monitor and police their users likely leading to more censorship measures such as the blockage and filtering of content online in the name of copyright enforcement,” Sutton said. “TPP negotiators have already agreed to more vague provisions that would oblige countries to enact prison sentences and monetary fines that are ‘sufficiently high’ to deter people from infringing again.” Another concern is that law enforcement would be encouraged to seize laptops, servers or domain names. “These excessive criminal copyright rules are what we get when Big Content has access to powerful, secretive rule-making institutions,” which is “yet another reason why we need to stop the TPP,” Sutton said.

Two separate Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC) lawsuits alleging several automakers violated the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) were consolidated into one in an order signed Monday by U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Ford and General Motors and their respective suppliers Clarion and Denso violated the AHRA because they shipped vehicles with CD-copying hard drives without building the Serial Copy Management System into the devices or paying the Copyright Office the required royalties on the hardware's wholesale price, AARC alleged in a July lawsuit (see 1410140084). AARC filed a second complaint in November repeating many of the same allegations against Chrysler and its supplier Mitsubishi. In consolidating the two cases, Brown did so “without prejudice to any future motion to bifurcate proceedings for the purpose of trial,” her order said. Lawyers for Chrysler and Mitsubishi argued the two cases involve "common issues of fact and common questions of law." Brown asked all sides to show cause why the cases shouldn't be combined, and no one objected (see 1501280047).