Though China has made progress on intellectual property, issues remain, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative reported to Congress on the country's World Trade Organization Compliance. During 2016, the two nations made “significant progress” on ensuring that information and communications technology (ICT) policies don't impose unnecessary nationality-based restrictions on the purchase, sale or use of those products by commercial enterprises, said USTR. It said the U.S. will continue to engage China on ICT policies and technology localization. China is reforming its IP rights regime, but U.S. companies must contend with unpunished thefts of trade secrets for the benefit of Chinese companies, widespread counterfeiting and “bad faith” trademark registration, whereby Chinese authorities “hold … them for ransom,” USTR said. It noted Chinese officials at a November Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting in Washington cited potential harm caused by “bad-faith” trademarks and confirmed they're taking more steps to combat them. Overly burdensome licensing requirements, discriminatory regulatory processes and informal bans on entry and expansion continue to affect telecom and internet-related services doing business in China, the report said.

Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma met Monday with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss “how Alibaba can create 1 million U.S. jobs by enabling 1 million U.S. small businesses to sell goods into the China and the Asian marketplace,” a Trump spokesman said. Trump’s meeting with Ma came less than a month after the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative redesignated Alibaba’s Taobao online shopping arm as a “notorious” market for IP infringement. Taobao faced ongoing criticism for not doing enough to combat the sales of counterfeit products (see 1612210068). Trump’s presidential campaign pledged to force China to stop IP theft (see 1606290080).

Patent and Trademark Office Director Michelle Lee said she’s “optimistic” the incoming administration “will share our appreciation of the importance of IP.” President-elect Donald Trump “has promised economic growth and job creation, and IP will necessarily be key to achieving that goal,” Lee said during Friday's speech at CES, according to prepared remarks. PTO is “well situated to address the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead” given its accomplishments over the past three years, she said. Lee noted PTO has reduced the backlog of unexamined patent applications by approximately 30 percent. The office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board proceedings aided in “providing a faster, more cost efficient quality check on the patents in the system,” Lee said. PTO’s Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative is continuing work that will “meaningfully move the needle on enhancing patent quality,” including increasing the clarity of the patent record, Lee said.

ACT|The App Association praised the Copyright Office Tuesday for its deployment this month of its online system for designating and searching for agents to receive copyright infringement claim notifications under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Section 512. Online service providers that have previously designated agents with the CO will have until the end of 2017 to submit a new designation electronically via the online system (see 1610310050). "App developers will finally have the ability to protect their intellectual property with the click of a button instead of the lick of (thousands of) stamps," said ACT Senior Policy Counsel Brian Scarpelli in a blog post. The old designation system "resulted in an online searchable database that was not user-friendly (for example, many fields were not searchable), often contained outdated or erroneous information, and made it difficult for copyright owners to send take-down requests to protect their work." ACT members "can now know they will be able to submit DMCA take-down notices more easily and accurately through accessing this new [CO] database," Scarpelli said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized the Association of American Publishers and major music industry interests for recent letters urging President-elect Donald Trump to strongly enforce IP rights and to push for changes to copyright law that appear to favor rightsholders. RIAA and other top music industry entities asked Trump last week to seek “strong protections” to protect IP rights, saying top tech sector firms “should follow others' example to effectively stop theft and assure fair payment.” AAP asked Trump last week to push Congress to make fixes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (see 1612130023 and 1612150033). EFF believes AAP and the music companies were pushing for a revamp of DMCA Section 512's safe harbor provisions, which “is a bad idea for everyone, including musicians,” said Policy Fellow Kerry Sheehan in a Tuesday blog post. “The music industry has benefited enormously from the Internet’s growth. Not only are there more opportunities for musicians to share their music with a global audience, but the industry itself is profiting handsomely.” AAP “also implies it wants even stricter enforcement against device manufacturers -- presumably through laws like Section 1201 that prohibit users from getting around digital locks on copyrighted content,” Sheehan said. “But locking down users’ devices, as with Digital Rights Management, is a massively unpopular strategy that impairs users’ ability to freely express themselves, interferes with access to books in accessible formats, hinders competition, and takes away users’ freedom to tinker with their own devices.” It appears “Big Content will never stop looking for more government support for their traditional business model, no matter what the cost to the Internet -- and they are never satisfied,” Sheehan said. “We urge the incoming administration to resist industry demands for more copyright regulation that, if history is any guide, will be both expensive and ineffective.”

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers said it reached agreement with Nielsen to improve reporting of music industry data. Nielsen agreed to give ASCAP “expanded” U.S. radio airplay data, including metadata and unique identifiers for recordings. The Nielsen data, when combined with ASCAP’s membership and copyright data, will significantly improve the transparency of information provided to ASCAP members, the performing rights organization said. The linkage to unique identifiers will particularly improve the potential for accurately reporting royalty information, ASCAP said. “Nielsen’s data will bring additional frequency and breadth to ASCAP’s reporting, enabling ASCAP’s members to have a 360-degree view of the performance landscape for their music, while enabling faster and more accurate reporting and tracking across all platforms,” said ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews in a news release. “This deal also sets the stage for us to provide our members with new business intelligence tools with predictive analytics components.”

The Copyright Office said it's extending to Jan. 30 the deadline for submitting comments on rulemakings to update the office's rules for supplementary registration information submissions, group registration of photos and group registration of periodicals. The CO released the NPRMs earlier this month (see 1612020025). The supplementary registration NPRM would update the rules to require an all-online application process. The photo registration NPRM would allow group registrations of unpublished photos, while the periodicals registration NPRM would require applicants for the group registration of contributions to periodicals to file claims online.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC) said Thursday they reached agreement on the royalty rate for ASCAP's recording repertory that RMLC member broadcasters must pay over the next five years. The agreement, which takes effect Jan. 1 and runs through 2021, sets unspecified increases in the rates for both terrestrial and digital performances of ASCAP members' music, the parties said. The agreement also “expressly affirms the percentage share of radio performances represented by ASCAP -- at a level that reflects that ASCAP licenses more performances on broadcast radio than any other performing rights organization" (PRO), ASCAP said. The new agreement “will provide enhanced financial benefits to ASCAP songwriters, composers and music publishers at a time of tremendous disruption in the music industry,” said ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews in a news release. RMLC Chairman Ed Christian in the news release said: “The increase in ASCAP fees is consistent with ASCAP's established spin share on radio.” A legal battle is ongoing between RMLC and the PRO Global Music Rights in which both parties are making antitrust claims. RMLC claimed in its lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia that GMR's higher licensing rates were prompting ASCAP and Broadcast Music Inc. themselves to seek higher rates from radio stations (see 1611210011 and 1612090062).

The Association of American Publishers urged President-elect Donald Trump Thursday to make IP rights protection a top priority. The administration should push for Congress to make fixes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, said AAP Vice President-Legal and Governmental Affairs Allan Adler in a letter to the transition team. The House and Senate Judiciary committees are gearing up to explore copyright legislation in the 115th Congress (see 1612080061). “The current epidemic of online infringement harms public as well as private interests in the availability” of creative content “and the legal flaws that hamper the DMCA in its intended operation need to be fixed,” Adler said. Earlier this week, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, RIAA and 17 other music organizations asked Trump to enforce IP laws to promote creativity and technological innovation (see 1612130023).

Copyright Royalty Board official reinstatement of rules easing requirements for noncommercial broadcasters and commercial broadcasters to report streamed sound recordings to SoundExchange for royalty purposes came “as music to the ears of those noncommercial broadcasters,” said Fletcher Heald copyright and music licensing lawyer Karyn Ablin in a blog post Tuesday, the day the board's notice came. It reinstated previously allowed reporting relief requirements, which take effect when an eligible broadcaster pays no more than the $500 minimum annual royalty (see 1612130043). The CRB inadvertently rescinded the rule in a June technical amendment (see 1608100020). “Our prediction that there would not be ‘any fierce or widespread opposition to the Judges’ proposed amendment’ proved accurate,” said Ablin, who proposed the rule’s reinstatement on behalf of the NAB and the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee. “Judges received only three sets of comments,” which didn’t affect reinstatement, she wrote. “It’s hard to argue that noncommercial broadcasters should be treated more harshly under the reporting rules than commercial broadcasters,” Ablin said. “We are glad to see that the Judges have amended their rules in a way that more accurately reflects this commonsense principle.”