Limit legal barriers preventing users from modifying or repairing software-enabled products, the Electronic Frontier Foundation commented to the librarian of Congress, while CTA renewed it and the Auto Care Association's call (see 1709150048) to allow additional lawful user circumvention for automotive fixes and upgrades, partly citing EFF. EFF is continuing a “years-long fight” to allow owners and creators more control over devices and products they own without threat of infringing on companies’ copyrights, said Legal Director Corynne McSherry Monday. EFF is seeking exemption from Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for all modifications and repairs of software-enabled devices that don’t infringe copyrights, and to allow alterations to smart speakers and digital home assistants. The register of copyrights "acknowledged the real world inadequacy of having confined exemptions for circumvention only to self-help by vehicle owners," but CTA disagrees that "granting such an exemption would verge too close to approving 'trafficking.'"

Federal intellectual property enforcement prosecutors are working in five “critical” regions to counter illegal trade in counterfeit and pirated goods, DOJ announced Friday. DOJ and the State Department jointly manage the IP enforcement program, which was established in 2006, and now has on-the-ground prosecutors in Abuja, Nigeria; Bucharest, Romania; São Paulo, Brazil; Bangkok; and Hong Kong.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to approve Andrei Iancu as director of the Patent and Trademark Office Thursday. Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Iancu is “extremely knowledgeable about the intellectual property field” and will be a “responsible leader” based on his experience with a wide array of IP issues. President Donald Trump nominated Iancu a few months ago (see 1709060017 or 1709060026).

​Amazon and Google patent applications “provide insight into the surveillance that is possible via smart home devices” like Amazon Echo and Google Home, with “troubling legal and ethical implications,” Consumer Watchdog reported Wednesday. CW conceded filing a patent application is no guarantee a company will commercialize inventions. It recalled that patent applications for the Google Glass and Amazon Kindle “seemed outlandish when they were filed,” until they resulted in “very real products for the applicants.” To "anticipate and meet consumers’ needs in new ways, digital assistants make increasingly invasive forays into users’ private lives. As users accept these intrusions, they give up their personal data, and with it, their privacy and security,” the study said. With the smaller-sized Echo Dot and Google Home Mini, Amazon and Google have “begun to foray beyond the living room and into the bedroom,” it said. “There, they can infer from your interactions with the device when you wake up -- and maybe even who you wake up with.” An Amazon patent application published Aug. 17 “describes using voice signatures and behavior to distinguish between members of a household,” said the report. “This could help Amazon determine whether to advertise birthday cake to your spouse or to your six-year-old.” A Google application published in October 2016 describes methods of speaker recognition through use of “neural networks." Google didn’t comment.

ATSC’s A/331 document on signaling, delivery, synchronization and error protection was approved Dec. 6 as a final 3.0 standard, said Monroe Electronics, which said the Advanced Emergency Alerting (AEA) specification “is based primarily on designs” it submitted. The document “specifies the technical mechanisms and procedures pertaining to service signaling and IP-based delivery of a variety of ATSC 3.0 services and contents to ATSC 3.0-capable receivers over broadcast, broadband and hybrid broadcast/broadband networks.” South Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute contributed IP, as did Fraunhofer, LG, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony and Technicolor. The AEA spec "is part of a non-proprietary standard," Ed Czarnecki, Monroe senior director-strategic and government affairs, told us Tuesday. "Our goal was to contribute an element in ATSC 3.0 that would enhance the overall value of next-gen TV.” AEA's messaging feature of A/331 will enable broadcasters “to leapfrog to IP-based, mobile, customizable, and media-rich emergency notifications to their audiences, with the potential for a range of first responder and public safety services,” said Czarnecki in a statement. It “will enable a vastly improved user experience for TV viewers when it comes to emergency alerts, whether they're watching through receivers on fixed screens, mobile phones, or portable devices such as tablets or vehicle-mounted displays,” said Monroe. Following FCC Nov. 16 authorization of 3.0 voluntary deployment, the goal of the Advanced Warning and Response Network Alliance is to have a "beta solution” on emergency alerting by early 2019 available for stations launching 3.0 broadcasts beginning in 2019 (see 1711200023).

Replies to a Copyright Office NPRMon cable royalty reporting are due Jan. 30, the CO announced Monday. Initial comments already were announced as being due Jan. 16 (see 1712040032). Stakeholders can also request meetings with the office on the matter, it said. The CO posted instructions on how to submit comments or request meetings.

Increased professionalism of video pirates means consumers sometimes don't realize they bought illicit streaming devices, Irdeto Senior Director-Cyber Services and Investigations Mark Mulready blogged Thursday. He said Rokus, Amazon Firesticks and Kodis have been popular devices for pirates, and Android TVs are gaining traction, with all those boxes' open nature helping in designing and installing illegal applications or add-ons. Pirates employ "slick looking websites" with access to legions of channels and movie titles with full support, some offering money-back guarantees, Mulready said: Such sites increasingly are moving from annual subscriptions to six-month offers allowing them to amend prices more regularly and ensure regular touch points with customers.

Global filings for patents, trademarks and industrial designs climbed to “record heights” in 2016 “amid soaring demand in China,” which processed more patent applications than the combined total for the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Europe, the World Intellectual Property Organization reported Wednesday. Inventors filed 3.1 million patent applications globally in 2016, an 8.3 percent increase from 2015. China received about 236,600 of the nearly 240,600 additional patent filings, accounting for 98 percent of total growth. China also drove the 16.4 percent increase in trademark applications to about 7 million, and the 10.4 percent increase in worldwide industrial design applications to nearly 1 million. Chinese patent authorities received a record 1.3 million patent applications in 2016 to lead the world, and the U.S. was a distant second with 606,000 applications filed. Rounding out the top five in patent applications filed: (1) Japan, with 318,000; (2) South Korea, 209,000; (3) Europe, 159,000. On a per-capita basis, Germany was the global leader, followed by Japan, South Korea, the U.S. and China.

SiriusXM properly interpreted gross revenue exclusions that satellite radio service can use when calculating royalty payments owed to SoundExchange to apply to pre-1972 sound recordings but improperly excluded certain revenue from its gross revenue royalty base, the Copyright Royalty Judges said in a regulatory interpretation published in Thursday's Federal Register. The interpretation was in response to a referral by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. CRJ judges also deferred to the court to determine whether SiriusXM had "a consistent, transparent, reasonable methodology" for valuing the exclusions applied to pre-'72 sound recordings.

While Apple pins faith on facial recognition to unlock iPhones, Samsung is going back to basics with fingerprint sensing -- with a twist. Samsung’s plan, as described in U.S. patent application 2017/0336906 published Thanksgiving Day at the Patent and Trademark Office, is to make a smartphone's touch screen of conventional appearance function also as a fingerprint sensor by switching resolution. If the captured scan image of the fingertip matches a reference image the owner previously stored, the phone unlocks and switches the screen back to normal touch control, it said. By reducing the screen area that needs to be scanned in high resolution, “speedy fingerprint recognition becomes possible,” it said. The manufacturer didn’t comment.