The creative community is losing a “lion” with the retirement of Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin said Monday, thanking Deutch for his work on film, TV and the streaming industry.

Lawyers on opposing sides of the July 2014 Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) copyright case presided over by then-U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in D.C. were effusive in their praise of Jackson's qualifications as President Joe Biden's nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (see Ref:2202280001]). Jackson "was presented with a case applying an arcane, little-used statute involving 1990s digital audio recording technology to modern in-vehicle infotainment systems,” emailed copyright attorney Seth Greenstein of Constantine Cannon. Yet she “mastered the intricacies of both the statute and the technology" in rendering a decision, he said Monday. Jackson's decisions in the case "were principled and clear, and unsurprisingly were affirmed unanimously by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals," said Greenstein. "I have every confidence she has the acumen and policy proficiency to succeed her former boss, Justice Breyer, as the Court’s thought leader on copyright, technology, and intellectual property.” Though Rick Dagen of Axinn Veltrop was lead AHRA attorney in a losing cause for the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies, he thinks Jackson will be an "incredible" Supreme Court justice, he emailed Tuesday.

Cox Communications and the music labels suing it are clashing over a piece of computer code not made available to Cox in discovery. The plaintiff labels said Thursday (docket 1:18-cv-00950) in U.S. District Court in Alexandria that code "is of no consequence, since its production would not have changed the jury’s finding of Cox’s overwhelming liability for the massive infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works." MarkMonitor uses the code to store data from Audible Magic's identification of the contents of suspected infringing files, the labels said. They said Cox's subpoena of MarkMonitor never asked for the code and has never argued its absence limited any expert analysis. Cox said the labels' direct infringement case hinged on the supposed accuracy of the MarkMonitor system and its ability to use Audible Magic tech to guarantee that only legitimate infringement allegations were made last month, in its motion for relief from the $1 billion verdict against it. The discovery of the code "demonstrates the existence of newly discovered evidence, which seems likely to warrant relief."

Six companies “consistently competed” in patenting activity involving four technologies “central to 5G,” but of the six -- Ericsson, Huawei, LG, Nokia, Qualcomm and Samsung -- “no single firm dominates 5G innovation at present,” reported the Patent and Trademark Office Tuesday. “The results suggest that there remains ongoing competition among these six 5G companies in patenting activity,” said PTO. “Given the complexity of the results, caution is recommended when reviewing media claims of 5G dominance.” The findings “call into question claims that any single firm or country is ‘winning’ the 5G technology race,” said the agency.

Cable operators have instituted the transparency requirements mandated in the Television Viewer Protection Act "in the way that best suits their customers and existing sales and billing systems," NCTA said Friday in FCC docket 21-501. Comments on TVPA implementation by MVPDs were due Thursday (see 2112200057). NCTA said some cablers "go beyond the [truth-in-billing] requirements" in providing similar information for all their services. It said TVPA implementation in some cases required development, lab testing, field testing, and rollout of new billing and other software that could pull required disclosure data from various sources. ACA Connects said TVPA's retransmission consent “buying group” provisions "have largely served their limited purpose" because small MVPDs were able to facilitate deals in the past year between the National Cable Television Cooperative and large broadcasters. ACA said the retrans market "remains broken" and cited FCC data showing small MVPDs pay substantially more per subscriber than large operators, with that disparity widening. It said the buying group terms meant smaller transaction costs for broadcasters and MVPDs and likely meant lower prices for very small cable systems, but that didn't and couldn't narrow the gap between what big and small MVPDs pay.

Electronic applications with declarations about Section 710 of the Copyright Act and deposits are due March 31, the Copyright Office said Thursday, extending the deadline from Dec. 31. The extension is the result of COVID-19 pandemic disruptions, the CO said.

Roku partnered with Entravision to expand its advertising business in Mexico, it said Wednesday. In Q3, Roku nearly doubled monetized video ad impressions, the company said.

SiriusXM's buying AudioID, announced Monday, is expected to simplify advertising buys for satellite radio, streaming music and podcasts, said SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz on Tuesday's Q4 call. She focused on SiriusXM’s streaming business, which “still has a long way to go.” The company is working to make it easier to use its app “in many more places,” to drive usage by satellite and stand-alone digital subscribers. When subscribers stream, they consume more, she said: “They listen twice as many hours on twice as many devices.” The company expects most subscriber adds to come in the second half, “given continuing semiconductor shortages and other factors limiting vehicle sales” late last year into 2022, said Chief Financial Officer Sean Sullivan. Shares closed 6.3% higher Tuesday at $6.76. Given automotive constraints, SiriusXM “played the hand they were dealt … about as well as they could have played it,” Pivotal Research's Jeffrey Wlodarczak wrote investors. Short-term risks are the economy and chip shortages curbing auto production, said the analyst. Long term, he cited autonomous driving as a threat.

BlackBerry signed a definitive agreement to sell its “legacy” patents to Catapult IP Innovations for $600 million, BlackBerry announced Monday. BlackBerry will receive back a license to the patents being sold, which mainly involve mobile devices, messaging, wireless networking and other businesses in which BlackBerry is no longer actively involved, it said: “Patents that are essential to BlackBerry’s current core business operations are excluded from the transaction.” Satisfying the regulatory conditions to complete the sale could take up to seven months, said BlackBerry. The process to sell the “noncore” portion of the patent portfolio took “much longer” than BlackBerry hoped, said CEO John Chen on a Dec. 21 earnings call (see 2112220013)

The Washington House Judiciary Committee delayed a vote scheduled for Friday on HB-1850, a privacy bill by Rep. Vandana Slatter (D) that got support and concerns at a hearing earlier in the week. It might be rescheduled to Wednesday, a House Democrats spokesperson told us. In Virginia, a proposed edit to the state’s 2021 privacy law moved to the House General Laws Committee after clearing a subcommittee by an 8-0 vote Thursday. HB-381 would allow a data controller to treat a consumer request to delete obtained by a third party as an opt-out for targeted advertising, personal data sale and from "profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning the consumer."