BMI distributed and administered a record $1.02 billion in royalties to composers, songwriters and publishers and had $1.13 billion in revenue to end FY 2017, said the performing rights organization's news release Thursday. Royalty distributions -- including domestic, international and direct deals that BMI administers on behalf of publishers -- were 10 percent higher from the prior fiscal year. Total domestic revenue, which included digital, media and general licensing, reached $836 million, up 7 percent. It said new long-term agreements with Netflix, Hulu and others helped boost digital revenue 7 percent to $163 million, while growth in terrestrial radio, cable and satellite radio categories upped media licensing revenue 6 percent to $524 million. The PRO processed nearly 1.4 trillion performances -- 1.35 trillion digital -- this year, up about 40 percent.
A Germany-based site that offered illegally "stream ripped" music with 60 million monthly global visitors shut down after legal actions by the U.K. and U.S. record industries, said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in a Thursday news release. Like similar sites, YouTube-mp3.org extracted audio files typically from music videos and offered them as "free permanent" downloads to users, said IFPI, adding stream ripping is the "most prevalent form of online music copyright infringement." It said the site made hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad revenue per month, but didn't pay anything to music artists and creators. Capitol Records, Sony, Warner Brothers and other companies settled Tuesday with YouTube-mp3 and its operator Philip Matesanz in the District Court for the Central District of California, said an order (in Pacer) agreed to by Judge André Birotte. The industry's complaint (in Pacer) was filed a year ago.
Via Licensing said Verizon joined its LTE licensing program. “Via’s patent pool provides a fair, transparent and cost-effective license to all essential LTE and LTE-Advanced patents from Via's LTE licensors,” Via said.
South Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute joined HEVC Advance, the one-stop-shop H.265 patent pool announced Tuesday. The licensor follows Samsung to become the second new member under an option for licensors to hold dual memberships in HEVC Advance and rival MPEG LA H.265 (see 1704050046).
Sharp Electronics seeks a ban on imports of Hisense smart TVs that allegedly infringe its patents, said a Tarrif Act Section 337 complaint filed Aug. 29 on which the International Trade Commission seeks comment by Sept. 13, according to Tuesday's Federal Register. Sharp has a trademark license agreement with Hisense that allows Hisense to make and sell Sharp-branded smart TVs, but Sharp says Hisense uses the same technologies to make smart sets under its own brand, violating patents. Hisense didn't comment.
The Copyright Royalty Board will begin a proceeding to determine distribution of digital audio recording technology royalty fees in the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Musical Works Funds, said a Friday notice in the Federal Register. Potential participants should file petitions and filing fees by Oct. 2, said the notice.
The U.S. will post intellectual property experts in the coming weeks to provide regional cooperation in Abuja, Nigeria; Bangkok; Bucharest; Hong Kong; and Sao Paulo, said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at an Interpol's international IP crime conference in New York Tuesday. He said Justice will respond more quickly to mutual legal assistance requests from other countries. The department is strengthening its ability to pursue charges through its U.S. attorney's offices and roughly 260 computer hacking and IP coordinators across the country and has developed a Cybercrime Lab, he said.
Monday’s announcement that Fox, Panasonic and Samsung will form a licensable certification and logo program built around Samsung’s HDR10+ dynamic-metadata high dynamic range platform (see 1708280018) was “definitely an attempt to give the industry an option for an open standard that could be further developed and one that’s royalty-free.” So said Danny Kaye, Fox Film Corp. executive vice president, when we asked him after Panasonic’s IFA news conference in Berlin Wednesday whether the HDR10+ licensing program was meant to give the industry an alternative to the proprietary, royalty-bearing Dolby Vision offering. Fox, Panasonic and Samsung will seek wide deployment of the HDR10+ licensing program once license terms are announced publicly at CES, Kaye told us. “We hope everybody adopts it,” he said. “That’s the intent of something like this with an open standard, to get as many device manufacturers, chip manufacturers, content providers, as possible, and that’s what we’ll try to attain.” The “ease of authoring” content with HDR10+ will lead to many more HDR films “becoming available” than previously thought, said Michiko Ogawa, who runs Panasonic's home entertainment business.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a lower court's 2016 preliminary injunction against online streaming service VidAngel (see 1708240017) was unsurprising, but the unequivocal decision should be welcomed by many copyright owners, Copyright Alliance Vice President-Legal Policy Terry Hart blogged Monday. The 9th Circuit ruling might not be the end of the litigation, since VidAngel retained "high-powered" attorney David Quinto and has been active on Capitol Hill, Hart said. He said VidAngel likely will file for en banc review by the 9th Circuit and then petition the Supreme Court unless it reaches a settlement agreement with studios. VidAngel didn't comment.
LG is “substantially” underpaying the royalties it owes on Advanced Audio Coding product shipments since signing a January 2009 patent licensing agreement to use the audio-compression technology, and has thwarted auditors from examining its “books and records,” alleged Via Licensing (in Pacer) Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Oakland. Via runs the AAC patent pool for parent Dolby Labs and Ericsson, Microsoft, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic and others. LG “breached its obligations to cooperate, and refused to allow a full and fair audit of its sales” under the license agreement, it said. LG didn’t comment Friday. The license sets a “standard” royalty fee structure that starts at 98 cents a unit for the first 500,000 AAC devices shipped in any country globally, and scales down to 10 cents a unit for device quantities of 75 million units or more.