MPAA drew attention to industry-led efforts to address online piracy issues. As House Judiciary Committee members visit California on their copyright "listening tour," MPAA said Monday it isn't encouraging addressing piracy via legislation. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., House IP Subcommittee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and nine other House Judiciary members are expected to attend one or both of the copyright roundtables planned in California as part of the committee’s Copyright Act review. The two sessions -- one after our deadline Monday at Santa Clara University and another Tuesday at the University of California, Los Angeles -- are likely to draw attention from the wide range of copyright stakeholders present in California (see 1511060052). MPAA Chief-Global Content Protection Dean Marks is set to speak during the UCLA roundtable and House Judiciary members will meet MPAA executives during a private dinner Tuesday. “We are currently focusing our attention on forging cross-industry, voluntary initiatives to ensure a safe and innovative digital environment, rather than seeking a legislative rewrite of copyright policy,” MPAA said in a blog post. Industry stakeholders “have made significant progress working with payment processors” like PayPal to “cut off the flow of subscription and advertising money to pirate sites -- one of the most effective ways of tackling online piracy,” MPAA said. The online advertising industry has joined with MPAA members and others to form the Trustworthy Accountability Group’s Brand Integrity Program Against Piracy to help advertisers “screen out websites that present unacceptably high risks of engaging in copyright or trademark infringement,” MPAA said. Other industry-led efforts include formation of the Copyright Alert System and publicizing the need for attention on “the use of domain names to engage in or facilitate unlawful conduct, and the role that search services play as a gateway by which many users discover and access sites involved in illegal activity,” MPAA said. The group said it supports efforts to “modernize” the Copyright Office and detach it from the Library of Congress. “Copyright is too important to be a secondary issue within the Library’s broader portfolio,” MPAA said. “The time has come to make the Register a nominated and confirmed position as the head of a stand-alone Copyright Office within the legislative branch.”

Fitbit filed a Section 337 complaint with the International Trade Commission, alleging Jawbone is importing wearable activity tracking devices that infringe its patents. The complaint, filed Nov. 2, reacts to similar allegations filed by Jawbone in July (see 1507270026), taking issue with Jawbone’s Up line of fitness trackers. The ITC is asking for comments on the complaint by Nov. 16, it said in a notice in the Federal Register.

Pandora and Sony/ATV Music Publishing signed a multiyear licensing agreement for Sony’s catalog of musical works, the companies said Thursday. Terms weren't disclosed. The direct publishing deal creates “business benefits” for Pandora, while modernizing compensation for Sony/ATV and its songwriters in the U.S., they said. The agreement is a "major step in the right direction to ensure that our songwriters are fairly compensated for the use of their music on streaming services,” said Martin Bandier, Sony/ATV CEO. The agreement means better rates “on one of the most important platforms for music consumption and discovery,” Bandier said. The companies called the deal a “win-win approach to publisher economics.” Sony songwriters will receive “improved performance royalties” while Pandora will benefit from improved rate certainty and the ability to add flexibility to its product offering over time, they said. The agreement doesn't cover public performance royalties that Pandora pays to rights holders of master recordings, said the companies.

Public Knowledge wants Congress to fix what it calls a "broken" process to grant exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. DMCA makes it illegal for people to bypass digital locks on copyrighted works such as software that runs many devices. "This means it can keep people from making repairs to the equipment in their car, accessing data from their blood glucose or heart monitors, using their cellphones with a new phone company, and more," said Public Knowledge on its website Wednesday. While the Copyright Office grants exemptions (see 1510280071) to DMCA, Public Knowledge said advocates for blind readers, medical device patients and 3D-printer users have to make their cases for exemptions every three years. "These are just a few of the burdensome and unnecessary locks that consumers should be able to circumvent," said the group, saying the three-year cycle is unnecessary.

Securus recently received three positive rulings in patent infringement cases and inter partes reviews (IPRs) between it and Global Tel*Link (GTL), it said in a news release Wednesday. In an IPR proceeding before the Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), Securus retained the validity of a patent challenged by GTL, it said. Securus also said a court denied GTL's request for damages and attorney fees in a separate case in which GTL alleged Securus improperly filed, and found two GTL patents, which the company claimed Securus infringed upon, weren't patentable. “This appears to be a Pyrrhic victory for Securus. Earlier this week, the Patent Board invalidated yet another Securus patent, which means one less tool for them to use in their trolling practices," a GTL spokeswoman told us. "GTL has successfully prevented Securus from suing any other competitors for three years now. That is good for competition and good for the broader market place."

The Patent and Trademark Office's new San Jose office will host a program on efficient patent prosecution Nov. 17, it said in a news release Monday. The program's three sessions will be on topics including virtual interviewing capabilities, utilizing prior art search tools and using the patent ombudsman to resolve procedural prosecution issues, said the PTO.

Kudelski Group subsidiaries Nagra France and OpenTV filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Verizon and its subsidiary AOL in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Nagra said in a news release Monday. The suit alleges Verizon and AOL products and services -- including FiOS TV, FiOS TV Everywhere, Go90 video services, Redbox Instant and AOL's Spot On advertising and streaming video services -- infringe on at least one of seven U.S. patents held by OpenTV and Nagra France. Verizon didn't comment.

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) sought comment on a motion for partial distribution of digital audio recording technology (DART) fees included in the 2014 Sound Recordings Fund, in Monday’s Federal Register. An Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC) settlement agreement filed in late July said it and parties it has reached settlements with agreed to distribute 98 percent of DART fees from the Sound Recordings Fund’s subfunds for copyright owners and featured recording artists. All but one claimant to the Featured Recording Artists Subfund reached a settlement, as have all but four claimants to the Copyright Owners Subfund, AARC said. CRB said it’s seeking comment from parties on whether any “reasonable objection exists” that would preclude the distribution of the DART fees. Comments on the partial distribution motion are due Dec. 2.

The Patent and Trademark Office will perform maintenance on certain systems next week, which will make access unavailable to its online patent application filing systems, it said in a news release Thursday. The maintenance will be from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. Nov. 7, and will affect online accessibility to its public and private Patent Application Information Retrieval systems, plus EFS-Web and EFS-Web Contingency electronic filing systems, said the PTO. During the outage, patent applicants can submit new documents, applications and fee payments by mail using procedures here, but are encouraged to transmit electronic filings before the outage period, the release said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation praised Senate Judiciary Committee leaders Friday for requesting a Copyright Office study of the role of copyright law on the use of “software-enabled devices.” EFF said that issue is “crucial because technology and the law have evolved in a way that no one could have intended when Congress wrote the present copyright laws.” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante in a letter Thursday that “this is a complex field, and how we interact with software in our products touches on numerous important policy arenas, including intellectual property, privacy, consumer protection, public safety, cybersecurity, competition, and the evolution of the digital marketplace.” The CO should “undertake a comprehensive review of the role of copyright in the complex set of relationships at the heart of these issues,” Grassley and Leahy wrote. That review should examine how legitimate usage of software-enabled products is affected by existing copyright law, how innovation is affected by those provisions and what changes to copyright law would affect the creation and use of software-enabled products, Grassley and Leahy said. The CO said Friday it’s “pleased” to have received Senate Judiciary’s study request and “will ask for public input to ensure that the Office’s report considers the views of all in the copyright community, including copyright owners and public interest groups.” The CO is expected Wednesday to release its ruling on proposed exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 1201’s ban on the circumvention of technological protection measures. EFF, which has advocated for several of the 27 proposed exemptions under review as part of CO’s triennial Section 1201 exemptions rulemaking process, said it believes Section 1201 “has restricted customers’ freedoms to repair, understand, and improve on the devices they buy.” EFF said it believes “there is already an extensive record establishing the need to rein in Section 1201, to protect device owners from copyright abuse enabled by end-user license ‘agreements,’ and to pass other reforms that would generally improve copyright law such as reducing statutory damages and the length of time that copyrights remain in force.”