Major advertising associations launched the Brand Integrity Program Against Piracy to help keep ads off sites that cater to piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods, a Trustworthy Accountability Group news release said Tuesday. TAG is an initiative backed by the Association of National Advertisers, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The co-chairmen of the International Creativity and Theft-Prevention Caucus applauded the announcement Tuesday. “With the adoption of validated tools to keep ads off pirate sites, it's incumbent upon advertisers and others in the supply chain to follow through and make use of these new technologies to cut off funding to sites that use online theft as their business model,” said Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in a caucus joint release. The new program is also backed by the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition, MPAA, RIAA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups, the TAG release said.

The Internet Commerce Coalition filed a brief on behalf of Google's case against Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood (see 1502020047). Google filed a lawsuit in December against Hood, alleging he tried to censor the Internet in an administrative subpoena he filed against the company in October (see 1412190045). Online free speech proponents have argued that MPAA’s alleged involvement in Hood’s subpoena proves the entertainment industry is pursuing alternative strategies to the failed Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act. Hood’s supporters have asked why a state attorney general shouldn’t be allowed to investigate a company for possible consumer violations and condemned Google’s use of stolen documents in the Sony Entertainment Pictures data breach in the case (see 1412170050). ICC argued in its filing that Hood stepped outside his legal jurisdiction. “Congress has determined that all legal claims involving the right to copy, disseminate, sell, and download works within the subject matter of copyright should be determined solely through a copyright infringement action in federal court,” it said. “State consumer protection laws, such as the Mississippi Consumer Protection Act ('MCPA') which provides the authority for the Attorney General’s Subpoena, are completely preempted in such circumstances.”

Patent reform is necessary, especially for software, because “juries and courts often fail to distinguish between patented code" and the end function of a software product, Heartland Institute Policy Adviser Steven Titch wrote in a Feb. 5 policy brief that was released Tuesday. “Frivolous patent litigation costs U.S. businesses $29 billion a year in direct costs and $80 billion in indirect costs,” Titch told us. Titch’s comments echoed President Barack Obama's 2014 State of the Union address, in which he encouraged Congress to “pass a patent reform bill that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly and needless litigation.” Congress should confirm Michelle Lee as director of the Patent Office, and the FCC should “avoid heavy reliance on patented technology,” the paper said. In the past several years, there has been an increase in “patent stockpiling” or “aggregation” as an increasing number of companies and individuals file frivolous or “mostly” baseless lawsuits, it said. Especially in today’s high-tech environment, where one personal computer, smartphone, gaming console or TV can “incorporate dozens or even hundreds of patented products or processes,” patent reform needs to occur, the paper said. These patent assertion entities (PAEs) or “patent trolls” such as Soverain Software, exploit weaknesses in the patent system, such as when Soverain claimed that any website shopping cart function was an infringement of its patent, it said. Soverain had a $40 million settlement with Amazon and a multimillion-dollar settlement with both Avon and Victoria’s Secret, the paper said. Due to the profitability of patent trolling, companies such as Nokia are now using patent litigation to earn revenue, which Titch said has made companies more reluctant when it comes to innovation. U.S. patent laws aren't broken, but “need to be reformed to better recognize the way innovation happens in the twenty-first century,” the paper said. "Enterprises should be using the marketplace, not the courtroom, to evaluate investment and return opportunities,” Titch said. “Patent reform can help by changing the cost-benefit ratios of litigation so frivolous patents are deterred but plaintiffs with legitimate cases are still able to bring a case." Soverain had no immediate comment.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation partnered with several countries, including Russia and Vietnam, to “defend” against their being “unfairly bullied” by the U.S. Trade Representative’s annual Special 301 report, said an EFF blog post Monday. The USTR report reviews IP protections and other market practices in foreign countries, highlighting those nations with the most problematic IP standards (see 1502060043). Countries like Russia and Vietnam are being asked to “to adopt failed U.S.-style copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret rules,” said EFF. “This would be absolutely fair enough, if the standards by which the other countries were assessed were globally-agreed standards, and if their adherence to those standards were assessed objectively, using a consistent and predictable methodology,” it said: “But they're not; rather, the USTR has free reign to castigate its trading partners for whatever reasons it can come up with.” The "mere listing of a country on the Priority Watch List has applied a heavy extra-legal influence on that country to amend its intellectual property laws and policies to accord with the USTR’s unilateral demand,” said EFF’s filing to the USTR.

Qualcomm said it reached a $975 million settlement with China’s National Development and Reform Commission to end NDRC’s investigation of the company under anti-monopoly law. The NDRC issued an administrative decision that Qualcomm violated the nation’s anti-monopoly law and the company agreed not to pursue further legal proceedings challenging the findings, Qualcomm said Monday. The company said it agreed to modify some of its business practices in China to satisfy Chinese law, including offering licenses to its 3G and 4G patents that don’t implement CDMA or WCDMA separately from its other patents, with royalties on 3G patents set at 5 percent and royalties on 4G patents set at 3.5 percent. “We are pleased that the investigation has concluded and believe that our licensing business is now well positioned to fully participate in China's rapidly accelerating adoption of our 3G/4G technology,” said Qualcomm President Derek Aberle.

Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam should be added to the U.S. Trade Representative’s “priority watch list” in its annual Special 301 report, the International Intellectual Property Alliance said in a news release Friday. The USTR report reviews IP protections and other market practices in foreign countries, highlighting those nations with the most problematic IP standards. The Association of American Publishers, the Entertainment Software Association, the Independent Television & Film Alliance, MPAA and RIAA are IIPA members. Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Switzerland, Taiwan and United Arab Emirates should be added to the 301 report’s general watch list, said IIPA. The USTR should have “special engagement” with Italy and Spain, it said. “No country, including the U.S., is immune from the harms posed by high levels of unfair practices on the Internet,” said RIAA Executive Vice President Neil Turkewitz in a separate release. But there are “distinctions to be made between the efforts of different countries, and today’s filing highlights practices in some of the countries that have been least responsive in addressing piracy.”

RIAA CEO Cary Sherman endorsed the Copyright Office’s recommendations to apply federal laws to pre-1972 sound recordings, and for terrestrial broadcasters to pay public performance royalties. The CO released a 245-page music licensing study Thursday (see 1502050055). “The office recognizes a consensus within the industry that the current system for licensing musical compositions is broken,” Sherman said in a Thursday statement. “Artists and labels behind iconic recordings made before 1972 deserve to be compensated by digital radio outlets like Pandora and Sirius.” The study confirmed Broadcast Music Inc.’s “position that music licensing, and specifically the archaic rules under which BMI must operate, is in need of change,” said CEO Mike O’Neill in a statement. He was referring to the consent decrees that govern BMI and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

The U.S. had the highest IP protections rating in a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global IP Center. The report was done by Pugatch Consilium, a market research firm, and analyzed the IP economies of 30 countries that account for nearly 80 percent of global GDP, it said. Countries were measured against 30 IP indicators, which included protections for patents, copyrights, trade secrets and IP enforcement both online and according to international treaties. The highest possible score was 30. The U.S. (28.53), the U.K. (27.61), Germany (27.28), France (27.16) and Singapore (25.38) had the highest scores. Thailand (7.10), India (7.23) and Vietnam (7.84) had the lowest scores. “Although the United States has introduced several successful initiatives to shut down rogue websites -- such as the ‘In Our Sites’ operation -- for a top-tier economy, it scores poorly in the enforcement indicators due to ineffective border measures to seize counterfeit goods,” the report said.

Public Knowledge filed a joint brief on behalf of Google's case against Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood because “Section 230 is a critical part of letting us all communicate online,” said a PK spokeswoman Monday. Without that part of the Communications Act, it's “very easy for overbroad liability and procedural fishing expeditions to shut down intermediaries necessary for communication and encourage them to restrict and restrain their customers' communications even more,” she said. “We've criticized Google's restrictions of customer communications in the past -- restrictions put in place due to pressures applied in the absence of protections like section 230.” That responded to accusations by David Lowery, a music business lecturer at the University of Georgia and a songwriter, that PK is among many advocacy groups serving the exclusive interests of Google (see 1502020047).

A proposal by IEEE to update the IEEE Standards Association’s (IEEE-SA) patent policy won't be challenged by the Department of Justice, DOJ said Monday. IEEE had contacted the DOJ and asked whether the proposed revisions to its patent policy violated antitrust laws. Based on reasons IEEE gave DOJ for the patent update, such as adding clarity to “the commitment patent holders voluntarily make regarding the licensing of patent claims,” Justice said it decided not to challenge the new patent policy. “IEEE’s decision to update its policy, if adopted by the IEEE Board, has the potential to help patent holders and standards implementers to reach mutually beneficial licensing agreements and to facilitate the adoption of pro-competitive standards,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse, who heads Justice's Antitrust Division.