The Copyright Office scheduled a Dec. 6 symposium to help determine best practices for the Music Modernization Act’s Mechanical Licensing Collective (see 1812210051). The event will explore how to “identify copyright owners and unclaimed royalties of musical works while encouraging copyright owners to claim royalties and ultimately reduce the occurrence of unclaimed royalties,” CO said.
Comments are due Nov. 6 on an EcoFactor Tariff Act Section 337 complaint with the International Trade Commission, alleging imports of smart thermostats and smart heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems infringe its patents, said Tuesday's Federal Register. EcoFactor says Ecobee, Google, Alarm.com, Daikin Industries, Schneider Electric and Vivint are importing the infringing products. EcoFactor seeks a limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders banning import and sale of infringing smart thermostats and HVAC systems by the companies identified. "We are confident that our products do not violate any third party patents and that this claim will not adversely affect our commercial objectives," emailed Schneider Electric. The other companies didn't comment.
Customs and Border Protection is delaying to Nov. 15 comments on its proposal to amend regulations to allow disclosure of information to trademark holders on voluntarily abandoned shipments, says Tuesday's Federal Register notice. The proposed rule would align information sharing procedures for voluntarily abandoned merchandise with procedures for seized merchandise, allowing CBP to better address trademark infringement by way of e-commerce shipments. Comments were due Monday.
Commerce Department export restrictions forced chipmaker Xilinx to remove all remaining Huawei-related “revenue expectations” from its outlook for fiscal 2020 ending in March, said CEO Victor Peng on a fiscal Q2 call Wednesday. He cited "trade restrictions with Huawei and the uncertainty presented to our business." He hopes "agreement between the U.S. and Chinese governments is reached as soon as possible, so we can resume engaging in a manner consistent with an important customer.” Xilinx got about $50 million revenue from Huawei in the first half ended Sept. 28, the “vast majority in Q1 before the restrictions, he said. Q2 sales in the Xilinx Wired and Wireless Group in which the Huawei business resides were down 8 percent sequentially, said Peng. Xilinx gets about 8 percent of its total revenue from Huawei in a normal year, he said. Though Xilinx “expedited” license applications, it hasn’t landed approvals, he said. Commerce got 200-plus Huawei-related license requests since the Chinese company was added to the agency’s entity list (see 1910230029). Huawei and Commerce didn't comment Thursday. Xilinx determined in Q2 there were some “older products that we could legally continue to ship” to Huawei, said Peng. It turned out that revenue from those products was “essentially negligible,” he said. “After one quarter of seeing that and not seeing any additional license approvals, we have decided that it's just prudent to take all the risk out.”
The Commerce Department got 200-plus Huawei-related license requests since the Chinese company was added to the agency’s entity list, according to a Commerce spokesperson. “Given the complexity of the matter, the interagency process is ongoing to ensure we correctly identified which licenses were safe to approve.” Companies haven't received approvals or denials, said trade lawyers with clients that submitted license applications. Huawei didn't comment Wednesday.
Technicolor is the newest licensee to join HEVC Advance, said the H.265 patent-pool company Tuesday. It's an "important milestone," said HEVC Advance, which launched in 2015 with Technicolor as one of five founding members (see 1503260045). Technicolor withdrew less than a year later to license its H.265 patent portfolio directly to device manufacturers, unhappy with the HEVC Advance decision to charge content-streaming royalties (see 1602040042). HEVC Advance later dropped its content fees on “anecdotal evidence” the royalties were hurting H.265 adoption (see 1803140037). "Technicolor did participate in the development phase of the pool but ultimately decided not to become a founding licensor (admittedly at the last moment)," emailed HEVC Advance CEO Pete Moller Tuesday. "Once someone joins as a licensor they cannot withdraw until 12/31/2025 at the earliest. In Technicolor’s case they 'left' before they signed any of the documents." When Technicolor departed, "they did indicate at that time that they planned to license their patents on their own," said Moller. "Ultimately, they sold a number to Dolby (which are in our pool) and then last year 'sold' their entire IP business to InterDigital."
CTA let lapse its 10-year-old trademark to the CEA logo, and the Patent and Trademark Office canceled the registration Friday, agency records show. CTA didn’t respond by the Sept. 17 deadline to PTO’s “courtesy reminder” that the trademark would soon be up for renewal. Two other active CEA trademarks are due to expire in 2023 and 2025, say PTO records. CEA applied for them not long before changing its name to CTA in November 2015 (see 1511110002). PTO granted two trademark registrations May 28, one for the full Consumer Technology Association name, the other for the CTA initials.
The Copyright Office is proposing significant increases in filing fees to take effect in the spring. Thursday’s announcement said the proposed fee schedule shows large increases for “registration of a claim in an original work of authorship,” including a nearly 500 percent increase for a paperwork filing involving “registration of updates and revisions to a database that predominantly consists of nonphotographic works.” The fee for that paperwork filing would increase from $85 to $500. CO proposes an electronic filing for registering a claim in an original work of authorship would increase from $55 to $250, for paper filing, $65 to $250. Some fee schedules are reduced by about 20 percent, and other increases range from 15-180 percent.
Copyright legislation Congress is considering could “have devastating effects on regular Internet users and little-to-no effect on true infringers,” Electronic Frontier Foundation Policy and Activism Manager Katharine Trendacosta wrote Monday. EFF urged supporters to tell Congress not to pass the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (see 1909110030). The “obscure” board envisioned by the bill would have “enormous power” to levy huge penalties against “ordinary Americans,” she wrote.
Nokia declared more than 2,000 patent “families” to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute as 5G “standard-essential,” said the company Wednesday. ETSI is one of seven standards development organizations that belong to 3GPP, which is managing 5G standardization. The 2,000th family includes U.S. and European patents on higher-throughput “network resources” for smartphones, industrial devices and other equipment, said Nokia.