Congress needs to support the “Next Great Copyright Office,” Copyright Alliance CEO Sandra Aistars said in an op-ed for The Hill Thursday. “Step one in any review of the [Copyright] Act needs to focus on modernizing the Copyright Office itself.” All the witnesses and most House Judiciary Committee members at a hearing Thursday expressed support for CO modernization and independence (see 1502260057). Copyright experts told us last week that separating the CO from the Library of Congress has as much broad-based support as any issue in copyright (see 1502200040). “Copyright issues tend not to split across partisan lines, though there can be a so-called ‘copyright/copyleft’ split on certain substantive issues,” Aistars said. “The one area many seem to agree on regardless of their other views is that the Copyright Act has become progressively less comprehensible to ordinary people at the same time that copyright issues are becoming ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives,” she said. “All of these stakeholders require a modern, efficiently functioning Copyright Office with appropriate regulatory and adjudicatory powers,” but the CO “lacks administrative control over even its own budget and infrastructure needs,” Aistars said. “Because no agency exists with comprehensive, independent rulemaking authority in the copyright sphere, issues better suited for regulatory action continue to be resolved directly in the Act, or worse -- are ignored entirely.”

Ericsson sued Apple over 41 patents covering many aspects of iPhones and iPads, said the plaintiff in a news release Friday. After Apple refused the offer to have a court determine fair licensing terms binding to both companies, Ericsson filed two complaints with the International Trade Commission and seven with the U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas, it said. A jury in that court last week found against Apple in another lawsuit by Smartfish (see 1502270013). The patents in question for Ericsson are related to 2G and 4G/LTE standards as well as design of semiconductor components, user interface software, location services and applications, as well as the iOS operating system, it said. Ericsson seeks exclusion orders in the ITC proceedings and damages and injunctions in the court actions. Apple also sued, asking U.S. District Court in San Francisco to find that it does not infringe on a small subset of Ericsson's patents, said the release. Apple didn't comment.

Congress needs to fix “copyright’s draconian, unpredictable civil penalties,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog post Wednesday. “High and unpredictable penalties can make relying on fair use a game of financial Russian roulette for artists and innovators.” EFF promoted Fair Use Week, which includes universities, Authors Alliance and the R Street Institute as participants. “Congress could help fix these problems by clarifying that statutory damages should never apply to a copyright user who relies on a fair use defense in good faith, even if the defense is unsuccessful,” EFF said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday unanimously approved Michelle Lee to lead the Patent and Trademark Office. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he was pleased that the committee unanimously approved Lee’s appointment, but said he was “disappointed” she was not “more forthcoming during the confirmation process” when asked about patent troll legislation: “This is a critical problem that demands an effective legislative solution, and the USPTO Director must be actively involved in that process.” Hatch encouraged Lee to be more forthcoming if any other Senator asked her a question before her appointment to lead the PTO is put to a full Senate vote. Information Technology Industry Council CEO Dean Garfield urged the full Senate to quickly approve Lee’s nomination, saying the office “plays a critical role in advancing innovation because intellectual property is the foundation for the new products and cutting-edge technologies that are growing our economy and transforming our world.”

Apple was ordered to pay $532.9 million because its iTunes software infringed three patents owned by Smartflash, said a verdict from U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas. The case, filed in May 2013, alleged that Apple’s software infringed three patents held by Smartflash and originally Patrick Racz and Herman-ard Hulst, who signed the patents over to the company in 2002. The jury ruled Apple’s software infringed on those patents, and did so willfully. Apple said it refuses to pay another company for its own ideas and has been left with no choice but to take the fight up through the court system, in a statement Wednesday. It said Smartflash "makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented." The patents covered a portable data carrier for storing data and managing access to the data via payment information and/or use status rules, court documents said. They also cover a computer network that serves data and manages access to data by, for example, validating payment information. The complaint said the parts that infringe on Smartflash’s patents include the software components responsible for buying digital content or applications from iTunes, the software components responsible for providing digital content or apps upon payment validation, the software components that provide in-app payment functionality, the software components that provide in-app advertising functionality, the software components that store payment distribution information indicating to whom payments should be made for purchased digital content or apps, and the software components that install, on a computer or server, any version of iTunes that can access the iTunes Store, any version of the App Store app, or any version of the Mac App Store. A lawyer for Smartflash didn't comment.

Nearly 150 U.S. universities wrote Congress expressing concern over patent reform legislation. They said a large portion of the legislation goes “well beyond what is needed to address the bad actions of a small number of patent holders, and would instead make it more difficult and expensive for patent holders to defend their rights in good faith.” Mandatory fee-shifting and involuntary joinder are the most concerning because they would “make the legitimate defense of patent rights excessively risky and thus weaken the university technology transfer process,” the letter said. The patent system needs to provide strong protection for inventions to enable universities to license them to private sector enterprises, it said. Congress should take these concerns into consideration when assessing changes to the patent laws, it said. “It is imperative that any legislation avoid sweeping changes that would weaken our overall patent system and hinder the flow of groundbreaking advances from university research to the private sector, which catalyzes economic growth, creates jobs, and improves the lives of all Americans.” The letter was sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa; ranking member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.; and ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich. Among the signers were Boston University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation released a white paper Monday outlining its vision to fix the U.S. patent system, said an EFF blog post. The 37-page white paper calls for six legislative “reforms,” including “ensuring there are inexpensive and efficient tools for challenging the validity of issued patents” and “passing a comprehensive patent reform bill, such as the Innovation Act” (HR-9) (see 1502120043). “The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is issuing far too many weak and overbroad patents, particularly on software," EFF staff attorney Vera Ranieri said in the blog post. "Instead of promoting innovation, these patents become hidden landmines for companies that bring new products to market."

The Society of European Stage Authors and Composers agreed with the U.S. Copyright Office’s recent music licensing study proposal that “sound recordings and musical works should be valued on a more consistent basis,” CEO John Josephson said in a news release Wednesday. The CO’s study, released Feb. 5, backed full federal protection of pre-1972 sound recordings and terrestrial broadcasters paying public performance royalties (see 1502050055). “We agree with the Copyright Office’s recognition of the need to assure fair compensation to creators, the necessity for the licensing process to be more efficient and the demand for market participants to have access to authoritative data to identify and license sound recordings and musical works,” Josephson said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation asked a U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, to invalidate what the digital rights group calls a "junk patent," said an EFF news release. It said EFF partnered with Durie Tangri to defend Bytephoto.com from what EFF described as an “outrageous patent suit from a company that claims to hold the rights to online competitions on social networks where users vote for the winner.” Bytephoto.com has hosted user-submitted photos and competitions for best photo since 2003, EFF said. In 2007, Garfum.com applied for a patent on the “method of sharing multi-media content among users in a global computer network,” and filed an infringement lawsuit against Bytephoto.com in September 2014. EFF argued that “this kind of abstract idea using generic computer technology cannot be patented” and asked that the patent be declared invalid, in a motion to dismiss, the release said. "It's part of our job to identify stupid patents and to try to get rid of them, and this is one of the silliest I have ever seen," said EFF Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer. "Our client has been running 'vote-for-your-favorite-photo' polls for years, just for fun and the love of photography,” said Nazer, who's also EFF's Mark Cuban chair to eliminate stupid patents. “The idea that you could patent this abstract idea -- and then demand a settlement to go away -- goes against both patent law and common sense," he said. "Patents like this improperly interfere with the ability of people to use the Internet to do things they've been doing in the analog world for generations,” said EFF staff attorney Vera Ranieri. This patent is “interfering with the age-old tradition of like-minded enthusiasts getting together to celebrate their hobbies," Ranieri said: "Demanding a payout for infringement on an obviously bad patent like this one isn't just unfair,” it also is “a chilling effect against those who would want to use the Internet to expand their community." Garfum.com didn't comment.

The U.S. and Japan joined the Hague system for the global registration of industrial designs, adding "two of the world’s biggest economies" to a registry “that supports creators worldwide,” the World Intellectual Property Organization said in an announcement Friday. According to statistics from WIPO, which runs the registry, 8.2 percent of all design applications worldwide in 2013 were filed by applicants from the U.S., and 4.7 percent by applicants in Japan, the agency said. WIPO hopes other countries will consider joining the Hague system now that the U.S. and Japan have, it said. WIPO touts the 64-country-strong Hague system as offering a cost-effective means of registering industrial designs in a large number of countries, “providing design owners broad geographical protection of their designs with a minimum of formality and expense.” A Hague registration “produces the same effect of a grant of protection in each of the designated contracting parties as if the design had been registered directly with each national office, unless protection is refused by the national office,” WIPO said.