Google is “disappointed that Sonos has made false claims about our partnership and technology,” said a Google spokesperson Thursday. Sonos Chief Legal Officer Eddie Lazarus told a quarterly call Wednesday that a German court granted Sonos a preliminary patent injunction. The patent enables and controls transfer of media from a smartphone or tablet to playback devices, said Lazarus, a former FCC official. Google appealed, said the spokesperson. “We will continue to work to ensure that our German customers continue to have the best experience.” The order prohibits selling Google's Cast technology in Germany, “some aspects of which implicate the Sonos patent at issue, and encompasses such products as the Pixel 4a smartphone, Nest Audio speakers and the YouTube Music app," Lazarus said. Thursday, he told us it's a “promising milestone in our ongoing effort to defend our innovations and stand up to the unfair practices of Big Tech." Sonos closed up 7.4% at $33.83.

Voice of San Diego settled with the FCC, FAA and Department of Transportation in its Freedom of Information Act legal fight, said a notice (in Pacer, docket 20-cv-00990) issued this week in U.S. District Court in San Diego. The nonprofit media outlet sued last May over not getting records for a defense contractor's proposed drone test flight over San Diego. The FCC had said its Office of Engineering and Technology gave VOSD a link to the agency experimental licensing system where it could retrieve responsive applications, while FAA said it hadn't finished processing the FOIA request.

Any new EU-US data transfer scheme must avoid a "Schrems III" rejection by the European Court of Justice, European Commission Values and Transparency Vice President Vera Jourova told a Tuesday webinar on Privacy Shield. Given her discussions with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, "I remain pretty much confident" a new data-sharing regime is possible because of new momentum between like-minded partners. Asked what the EU's strategy is, Jourova said it's to achieve a common understanding of pillars on which a new pact might be built. The essential vision is to remake PS for legal certainty, and to work through problematic issues, mostly on the U.S. side. A federal privacy law "would help," said Jourova. Surveillance issues must be addressed by resolving the conflict between national security and privacy principles, and imposing tougher safeguards against mass surveillance, she said. Europeans need more certainty they will get redress for abuse of their personal data. Asked when a new PS might emerge, Jourova said talks have resumed but will take time: Quality is more important than speed. Negotiations are taking place in a different context from when the ECJ annulled safe harbor, said Commerce Department Privacy Shield Director Alex Greenstein: The stakes are higher now because the world has become more digital. He said Schrems II addressed standard contractual clauses (SCCs) and other data transfer mechanisms, so the situation is about all transfers "writ large," resulting in a "significant impact on trans-Atlantic commerce." Asked whether it will be possible to find a new outcome without fundamental changes on the U.S. side, Greenstein said the U.S. issued a white paper about surveillance practices to help companies make the required risk assessment for SCCs, but that's an imperfect solution. U.S. domestic privacy legislation would probably not affect the negotiations because it probably wouldn't address ECJ requirements, which is why talks are focused on surveillance. No one believes a federal privacy bill can address mass surveillance because it's focused on the commercial side, said Bruno Gencarelli, deputy director-head of unit, international data flows and protection, EC Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers. Such a law would strengthen the basis on which any new PS would be grounded, he added.

NTG Release Group, a "massive 'ripping and uploading'" video piracy operation, is voluntarily shutting, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment said Monday. It said NTG, also known as "Not the Grinch," had operated since 2018 and was responsible for 4,600 pirated releases of movies and TV shows to torrent sites in 2020. ACE members include Amazon, Charter, Comcast, Disney, Netflix, Sony and ViacomCBS.

Some 6% of attempted new seller account registrations passed Amazon’s verification processes, blogged Dharmesh Mehta, vice president-customer trust and partner support. He detailed Sunday how the e-commerce giant uses machine learning and “expert human review.” Amazon prevented more than 6 million attempts to create new selling accounts and blocked more than 10 billion suspected bad listings before they were published. The e-tailer seized and destroyed more than 2 million products sent to its fulfillment centers and detected as being counterfeit.

Ericsson and Samsung reached a multiyear agreement covering global patent licenses, including on all cellular technologies, the companies said Friday. The agreement covers sales of network gear and handsets from Jan. 1. They agreed on “technology cooperation projects to advance the mobile industry in open standardization and create valuable solutions for consumers and enterprises.” This settles complaints filed by both companies before the U.S. International Trade Commission plus “ongoing lawsuits in several countries,” they said.

Video-based social media platform Triller, which is suing an array of sites and YouTube channel operators for allegedly pirating a stream or MVPD broadcast of the Jake Paul/Ben Askren boxing match to which it owned the rights, is offering amnesty at $50 per viewer. It said June 1 is the deadline for people who watched via a pirated signal but weren't involved in the sale or distribution to be "eligible to receive a one-time settlement and release for their unlawful acts." It set up a website for registering and making payments. Triller in a copyright infringement complaint last month (in Pacer, docket 21-cv-03502) in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said the pirating of the April 17 bout cost it upward of 2 million views, and sought damages in excess of $100 million. The defendants include Filmdaily.com, Accesstvpro.co, Online2livestream.us, Crackstreamslive.com, Sports-today.club, My-sports.club, Bilasport.com, Trendy Clips, Eclipt Gaming, ItsLilBrandon, the H3 Podcast and H3H3 Productions. In a motion Wednesday, it asked for expedited discovery so it could serve subpoenas on online platforms including Google's YouTube to discover defendants' identities.

Spotify rolled out its podcasting platform Tuesday, allowing creators to offer subscriptions through a separate platform, as Apple (see 2104200081), Facebook and others make more audio moves. Spotify's will be available through its Anchor service, letting podcasters mark episodes as subscriber-only. For the first two years, creators will receive all subscription revenue; in 2023, Spotify will begin charging 5% of revenue. The company also is testing a platform for creators to deliver paid content to existing paid audiences elsewhere while retaining direct control over the relationship, it said. Podcast listening got a boost from stay-at-home trends, said Futuresource: Respondents listening to podcasts grew from 36% in 2019 to 41% at year-end 2020.

Comments are due May 26 on a rule proposing to expedite registration procedures for small claims before the Copyright Claims Board, the Copyright Office said Monday. The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act directed the rule, which would allow a “claimant or counterclaimant” to “pay a small additional fee and request expedited registration.”

The Patent and Trademark Office approved CTA’s second deadline extension request on filing a statement of use (SOU) for the association’s NextGenTV logo as a certification mark on ATSC 3.0-compliant TVs, agency records show. CTA has until Oct. 21 to file the SOU and is entitled to three more deadline extension requests of six months each. It must file by April 21, 2023, the third anniversary of the logo’s notice of allowance, or risk abandonment of the application. PTO requires the SOU as a final condition for issuing a registration certificate to prevent applicants from intentionally hoarding trademarks with no plan to deploy them commercially. CTA told us six months ago that it anticipated filing for no additional extensions because NextGenTVs were prevalent on the market and the logo was plainly in commercial use (see 2010270018). “We don’t anticipate further delays in the PTO process," said Brian Markwalter, CTA senior vice president-research and standards, when asked Wednesday about CTA's apparent reversal. The association is glad the NextGenTV logo "is now in the market -- and we expect sales of these products to grow exponentially," he said.