The Copyright Office updated its electronic system that designates and searches for agents named by service providers to receive notifications of claimed infringements under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, said a Wednesday announcement. Updates include: the CO can transfer a designation from one user account to another, if requested; system users can now view terminated designations; users can delete in-process designations; and a preview screen is available for users before they submit payment. The office said service providers that previously registered a designation through the old paper-based system must file one electronically by Dec. 31 for $6 to maintain active designation.

House legislation aimed at making music licensing more transparent is a "one-sided approach that would fail to simplify" it, the Content Creators' Coalition wrote House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich. C3, which urged the committee to reject HR-3350 introduced by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., in July (see 1707260009), is "deeply concerned about the bill's onerous registration system and financial penalty (forfeiture of statutory damages and attorneys' fees) for songwriters or publishers who fail to register their works in a new database, created and run by the government." Sensenbrenner's bill would direct the register of copyrights to create and maintain a searchable database of sound recordings, permitting businesses that want live music performed there to identify and pay copyright holders. C3 said Friday an IP right shouldn't be subject to forfeiture, nor should there be hurdles for creators "on pain of losing control." The coalition said there's support for the Fair Play Fair Pay and Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service and Important Contributions to Society acts (see 1707200012). The letter was signed by members of the c3 executive board, musicians Melvin Gibbs, John McCrea, Rosanne Cash, Tift Merritt and Matthew Montfort, Executive Director Jeffrey Boxer and artist manager Tommy Manzi.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comments from foreign governments through Oct. 27, and from everyone else through Oct. 20, on whether and how the agency should identify Thailand based on its intellectual property protection regime or market access it provides Americans who rely on IP protection, USTR said in Thursday's Federal Register. USTR announced Sept. 15 it was starting an out-of-cycle review of Thailand’s “Special 301” status because of positive steps the country took. The agency put Thailand on the Special 301 priority watch list in its 2017 Special 301 report in April. Thailand requested the review “in light of its efforts to achieve substantial progress” in its IP regime, USTR said.

A coalition of nearly two dozen music organizations wrote U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer that the tech community is "working for a backward-looking agenda" for the North American Free Trade Agreement at the expense of U.S. cultural, economic and employment interests. In the Tuesday letter, the coalition, including ASCAP, BMI and RIAA, cited an Aug. 31 letter to him from CTA, Internet Association and other industry groups that want a "strong and balanced copyright framework," which includes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbors. That tech letter said DMCA safe harbors and the Copyright Act exceptions are essential to the internet's commercial growth and any modernization of NAFTA that omits portions of a copyright framework that the tech sector relies on "will cause serious harm" to part of the economy and risk jobs. But the music coalition said the tech sector wants the U.S. to insert "vast loopholes" in the copyright system "such as broad copyright exceptions and sweeping immunities for those committing content theft." The music coalition said it would permit trading partners to be havens for piracy for those who illegally infringe on American content. "Beyond the U.S. experience, our trading partners are simply not in a position to implement U.S. safe harbor law in their own domestic systems, which lack fundamental aspects of the U.S. legal system, including our high-standard intellectual property protections, our case law and our Constitution," the music coalition said. It said adding safe harbors would put U.S. creative industries at a "competitive disadvantage."

Sony has ideas for adapting virtual-reality head-up display technology for use in cars, said a U.S. patent application (2017/0240047) published Aug. 24 at the Patent and Trademark Office. The application, filed in early 2016, describes an “active window” for vehicle infomatics and VR in which the car’s front windshield is partly covered with a flexible, transparent OLED screen so the driver or passengers can see a real-world view of the car’s surroundings overlaid by synthetic images. Using what Sony dubs a “fun selector,” occupants can decide whether to augment reality with useful information to aid navigation or to add whimsy. The outside world can be “enhanced to allow amusing things to happen,” such as an image of a dinosaur peering out from between two trees or boulders, or superimposing images of grass, lakes and flowers onto a desert landscape through which the vehicle is passing, it said. Sony didn’t comment Tuesday on possible commercial plans.

Sharp’s patent infringement complaint at the International Trade Commission seeking an import ban on Hisense smart TVs (see 1709050045) is part of a “scorched-earth campaign” to “undo” a 2015 license agreement that gave Hisense rights to sell Sharp-branded TVs in the U.S., Hisense commented (login required) in docket 337-TA-3246. Hisense-Sharp tensions gained in July with Foxconn plans to build a $10 billion LCD display fab in Wisconsin as the centerpiece of a Foxconn-Sharp commitment for an 8K ecosystem. Legislation authorizing Wisconsin to negotiate a contract that would pay Foxconn up to $3 billion cleared the Assembly Thursday. Gov. Scott Walker (R) was scheduled to have signed the bill into law Monday afternoon. An import ban would harm consumers, said Hisense. “Consumers will suffer from fewer choices among smart TVs.” A decrease “may also cause prices to increase,” it said. On a unit-share basis, Hisense's own product had 3 percent North American TV market share in the first half of 2017, Paul Gagnon, IHS Markit director-TV sets research, told us.

The International Trade Commission began a Tariff Act Section 337 investigation into allegations of companies including DTS importing and selling wireless audio systems that infringe patents held by Broadcom and Avago Technologies, said an ITC news release. Broadcom and Avago's Aug. 10 complaint said DTS’ “Play-Fi” technology, which allows a user to stream music from a device into one or more speakers located throughout a user’s home, copies their patented technologies. DTS didn't comment.

The Copyright Office issued “model statutory language” Friday for potential legislation for a digital-age update of Copyright Act Section 108’s exemption allowing libraries and archives to reproduce and distribute copyrighted works, cautioning the discussion document wasn't its “final word.” The CO held meetings last year with stakeholders in advance of a planned legislative recommendation on a Section 108 update, though ongoing opposition from library stakeholders made it unclear that Congress would want to prioritize an update (see 1606070052 and 1606210066). The CO’s draft includes expected language that would extend Section 108’s exemption to include museums and all works publicly disseminated online (see report in the April 3, 2008, issue) but not a stricter definition of what constitutes a library or archive. “Adding museums as an eligible entity would ensure, among other things, that small museums that may not be associated with a library or archives could take advantage of the benefits” of Section 108, the CO said. The draft doesn’t attempt to more strictly define what a library or archive is, but the courts have “appropriately interpreted” what they are, the CO said. “It is likely that courts would draw similar lines in interpreting 'museums' within the proposed section 108 context." The draft also proposes to remove an existing three-copy limit under Section 108 and replace it with updated language that reflects libraries’ practice of relying 'on fair use to cover the making of additional copies, including temporary, incidental copies.'"

Some commenters told the Copyright Office they seek leeway under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for circumventing technological protection measures, showed filings last week on regulations.gov COLC-2017-0007-0001. The Auto Care Association and CTA requested "exemption for diagnosis, repair, and modification of computer programs that control" autos' operation so "owners of vehicles [can] obtain the benefits from the exemption recognized in the previous triennial review," "free of any constraint in time or scope based on external, non-copyright factors, as were imposed in the previously granted exemption." BSA|The Software Alliance also sought an exemption involving cars, for "good-faith security research [that] does not violate any applicable law." Repair entity iFixit asked the CO for "an expansion to all existing repair exemptions to allow third parties to provide service at the request of the owner" and contends "Sec. 1201(a) does not bar the creation and distribution of tools primarily intended for repair of devices that contain embedded software protected by technological measures."

The Copyright Office published a final rule that puts all regulations for the use of a copyright notice into a single location, said a notice Tuesday. The rule takes effect Oct. 12. "This rule, intended to simplify and streamline the regulations, makes no substantive changes to the regulations" and combines "regulations at 37 C.F.R. 201.20 to 37 C.F.R. 202.2 into one location in section 202.2," it said.