Samsung applied last week to register “HDR10” and “HDR10 Plus” as plain-text trademarks with no logos for a wide range of possible commercial and consumer devices and applications, Patent and Trademark Office records show. The company made similar requests a day earlier to European trademark authorities, PTO records show. An early mention of HDR-10 is in “voluntary guidelines” that CTA (then CEA) released in August 2015 on what features would qualify a TV to be called “HDR-compatible": It should be capable of receiving and processing the "HDR10 Media Profile" from internet protocol, HDMI or other video delivery sources, though additional media profiles may also be supported. CTA "does not have an opinion on the status of HDR10 in terms of whether it is in the public domain," Brian Markwalter, senior vice president-research and standards, emailed us Tuesday. Samsung didn't comment.

Dish Network likely will "employ any scheme" it can to put off meaningful negotiations with Hearst, the broadcaster said in a letter to customers posted Monday on the website of WBAL-TV Baltimore and other stations. Dish and Hearst blamed each other for the March blackout resulting from a retransmission consent renewal impasse (see 1703030011 and 1703090021). Hearst in its letter called Dish suggestions of the broadcaster's intransigence "untrue" and said it's the satellite company that hasn't budged on its "completely off-market terms in any meaningful way." Dish didn't comment Tuesday.

The interconnected PubFilm websites are a "massive" pirated TV and movie streaming operation with more than 8 million visits a month, several content companies said in a lawsuit (in Pacer) unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The suit said the PubFilm pirate sites include PubFilm, PubFilmHDNo1, PubFilmHD, PidTV, Top100Film and iDMCA and are believed to operate from Vietnam. Alleging direct and secondary copyright infringement, trademark infringement, unfair competition and false designation of origin, the content companies asked for an order that the PubFilm domain names be rendered inactive and transferred to them, as well as for damages. The plaintiffs are Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Columbia, Universal, Disney, Paramount and Viacom. PubFilm didn't comment Tuesday.

Last week’s WikiLeaks disclosure that the CIA worked secretly with U.K. authorities in 2014 to hack Samsung smart TVs and turn them into covert microphones (see 1703070047) sparked the first known complaint Tuesday, that from a Long Beach, New York, resident who alleged the voice recognition feature on Samsung smart TVs violates federal privacy statutes. Joshua Siegel bought several Samsung smart TVs “and kept them in personal and private areas of his home, including his bedroom and living areas,” said the complaint (in Pacer), filed in U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, the district where Samsung Electronics America is headquartered in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. Siegel was unaware his family’s “private conversations in their home could be hacked by third parties due to Samsung’s reckless and/or negligent failure to protect that private, sensitive data and recordings,” said the complaint, which seeks class-action status. The “degree” of the company's “lack of adequate protection” was revealed publicly when WikiLeaks said Samsung smart TVs “were in fact being used by outside parties to spy on Samsung customers’ private conversations,” said the complaint. Samsung declined comment Tuesday. Samsung responded to the WikiLeaks report a day later with a statement that it was “urgently looking into the matter,” and that “protecting consumers’ privacy and the security of our devices is a top priority at Samsung” (see 1703080014).

FCC draft channel sharing rules understate “potential carriage burdens” that will be caused by post-incentive auction channel sharing (see 1703080066) and incorrectly describe legal rulings behind must-carry rules, NCTA said in meetings Thursday with acting General Counsel Brendan Carr, an aide to Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, and Media Bureau and Office of the General Counsel staff, said an ex parte filing posted in docket 15-137 Tuesday. Contrary to language in the draft, FCC precedent shows changes in the cable market made the justification for carriage rules less certain, NCTA said. “Chairman [Ajit] Pai himself has made the point that significant changes in the video distribution marketplace” have “eroded the justification for invasive cable carriage mandates,” NCTA said.

Ad management company Sizmek partnered with TV advertising company BrightLine on an interactive connected video experience crossing desktop, mobile, tablet and over-the-top platforms, it said in a Monday announcement. The joint offering pairs BrightLine’s interactive, dynamic OTT ad platform with Sizmek’s HTML5 Vpaid technology to allow marketers to repeat the desktop interactive video experience across all channels, they said. OTT is the fastest growing source for digital video, with 74 percent of U.S. households now owning a smart TV, it said. Citing industry studies, the companies said advanced TV ads delivered on OTT platforms have higher engagement metrics than traditional TV ads, including higher purchasing intent, brand recall and likeliness to recommend.

Despite blizzard warnings posted for most of the New York metropolitan area, Samsung Electronics America late Monday was forging ahead with its 2017 Home Entertainment launch event in Manhattan scheduled for 1 p.m. Tuesday, Samsung representatives said. Samsung's newly introduced 2017 line of QLED TVs is expected to figure prominently at the event. National Weather Service forecasters told New Yorkers to expect up to two feet of snow Tuesday, accompanied by wind gusts exceeding 50 mph and whiteout conditions. Authorities took the rare measure Monday morning of closing New York City schools Tuesday, 24 hours in advance. because of the storm's expected severity.

Pandora is launching its $10-per-month Premium on-demand service Wednesday on mobile devices and for cars, it announced. Premium will be available first on iOS and Android smartphones, Google Chromecast, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and in vehicles from General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda and Subaru. It will be available on other platforms, including desktop and “popular connected devices,” in coming months, Pandora said. Juggling three tiers, the company is offering existing subscribers to Pandora Plus -- its $4.99 mid-tier subscription that went live last year -- six months of Premium free. On Friday, an analyst noted Pandora shifted focus from the $5-per-month Plus tier after adding 200,000-250,000 subscribers in Q4 and another 90,000 in January (see 1703100044). Sonos wasn't listed as a launch platform partner for Pandora Premium, and the companies didn't comment Monday.

Macquarie Securities is modeling Pandora paid subscription churn for 2017 at 4-5 percent, parallel to other paid music streaming services, Amy Yong wrote investors Friday. The analyst is projecting 2017 paid subscriptions for Pandora’s $4.99-per-month Plus service at 4.8 million and at 1.1 million for its $9.99-per-month Premium service that launches this month. That’s at the low end of Pandora’s expectations of 6 million to 9 million paid subscribers. Pandora is an “outperform,” as recently named Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra (see the personals section of the Feb. 28 issue of this publication) “could bring financial discipline and a fresh perspective,” the analyst wrote.

It's unlikely Facebook, Google and other tech companies can stop or even slow the spread of fake news because their business models "enable the economic engine that powers fake news, and the demand for a social media site's version of the truth is probably quite low," wrote American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Jamison in a Thursday blog post. Many bloggers and writers of false stories, he said, are paid -- some up to $10,000 a month -- based on the number of views of the articles they write and costs are low to spread such stories, while the payoff in media attention is high. "The internet makes the fake news economic engine possible," said Jamison, who was on the FCC transition team. He cited a 2016 Pew Research Center study that said most consumers don't trust the news they find on social media. Fighting fake news means creating an economic engine that gives consumers more value and is more powerful than the one that drives fake news, Jamison said.