The European Commission opened a public consultation Wednesday as part of its planned update of EU copyright rules, focusing on the role of publishers in the “copyright value chain.” The public consultation will in part explore whether to extend neighboring rights to publishers, which don’t currently benefit from such rights. Neighboring rights are similar to copyright but pertain only to performances of a copyrighted work by a performer or the production of a copyrighted work. The EC said it’s also consulting on the “panorama exception” -- peoples’ use of images depicting buildings, public monuments and publicly displayed sculptures. Comments on the consultation are due June 15, the EC said. The Computer and Communications Industry Association said it will further analyze the issues involved but praised the EC for “offering this consultation and its willingness to listen to all stakeholders.” European copyright laws “should reflect the symbiotic relationship between publishers, and technology, as well as citizens’ freedom to access information and publish their own material online,” said CCIA Vice President James Waterworth in a news release. “Such an approach will benefit consumers and overall economic growth.”

While music sales have been "skyrocketing," revenue for creators isn't keeping pace, wrote RIAA Chairman Cary Sherman in a blog post Tuesday. In 2015, consumers listened to "hundreds of billions of audio and music streams through on-demand ad-supported digital services like YouTube," but he said revenue has been "meager" and the problem is worsening. Sherman said major technology companies, which he didn't identify, are essentially usurping the revenue that should go to music creators by taking advantage of "outdated, market-distorting government rules and regulations that either pay below fair-market rates, or avoid paying for that music altogether." Sherman cited the exemption AM/FM broadcasters get from paying artists and labels, satellite's below-market rate standard, "and the hopelessly outdated 'notice and takedown' provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which many services have distorted to rake in billions of dollars of revenue on the backs of artists, songwriters and labels." RIAA reported that in 2015, for the first year ever, streaming was the largest component of music revenue, at 34 percent of the market and slightly higher than downloads. Total recorded-music revenue rose 0.9 percent to $7 billion from the prior year, and "continued growth of revenues from streaming services offset declines in sales of digital downloads and physical product," RIAA said.

The Copyright Office said it plans two public roundtables in May on its study of Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512's safe harbor provisions. The CO announced the Section 512 study in December (see 1512300039) and is collecting public comments on the parameters of the study through April 1. One two-day roundtable will be May 2-3 at the New York University School of Law, and the other May 12-13 at Stanford Law School, the CO said in Friday's Federal Register. The NYU roundtable will run 9 a.m.-5 p.m. both days in Furman Hall's Pollack Colloquium Room, the CO said. The Stanford roundtable will run 9 a.m.-5 p.m. both days in the school's Manning Faculty Lounge, the CO said.

Spotify and the National Music Publishers' Association settled Thursday over claims the company failed to pay mechanical royalties on songs played via its streaming service that Spotify claimed lacked sufficient ownership information. Spotify faced multiple lawsuits (see 1512290048 and 1601110047) over claims the company wasn't obtaining mechanical licenses on copyrighted music. The Spotify-NMPA settlement will let music publishers claim royalties on performances of songs in the U.S. via Spotify for which ownership information “was previously unknown,” Spotify and NMPA said in a joint news release. The agreement sets up a compensation fund for unmatched royalties, with Spotify's contribution to that fund being a “substantial” proportion of the amount of unpaid royalties that the company currently holds, they said. Neither NMPA nor Spotify confirmed the size of the compensation fund. An industry lobbyist told us it would be around $30 million. “I am thrilled that through this agreement both independent and major publishers and songwriters will be able to get what is owed to them,” NMPA CEO David Israelite said in a news release. "We must continue to push digital services to properly pay for the musical works that fuel their businesses and after much work together, we have found a way for Spotify to quickly get royalties to the right people.”

The U.S. in 2015 “extended its long-standing position as the top source of international patent applications,” the World Intellectual Property Organization said in a Wednesday report. International patent applications filed under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system grew 1.7 percent to 218,000 in 2015, setting a new annual record, WIPO said. “Innovators based in the U.S. have filed the largest annual number of international patent applications for 38 years running,” it said. “Still, large increases in patent-filing activity by China-based innovators accounted for much of the overall growth.” The U.S., with 57,385 international patent applications, remained the largest user of the PCT system last year, despite a 6.7 percent decline in the number of applications from a year earlier, it said. WIPO attributes the 2015 U.S. decline to “an unusually large number of filings in 2014" spurred by changes in the U.S. patent system under the America Invents Act, it said. In 2015, the U.S. was followed by Japan (44,235 PCT filings) and China (29,846) among the top international patent filers, WIPO said. Asia more than doubled its share of all PCT applications filed since 2005, reaching 43 percent of the total, it said.

The U.S. Copyright Office plans to co-sponsor an April 18 symposium on moral rights, which the office said Friday will launch additional analysis on the subject that Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante recommended in 2015. The CO said it plans to run the symposium in partnership with the George Mason University School of Law and the school’s Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property. The symposium will explore how current U.S. copyright law provides for moral rights and whether existing laws fully cover moral rights in the digital age, the CO said. The symposium also will examine historical development of moral rights and the value that authors place on moral rights. The CO will hold the symposium at the Library of Congress’ Madison Building.

Techniques for giving users of “stream casting devices” the ability to encrypt content before it can be viewed on “second screens” are contained in a Vizio patent application (US 2016/0072774) published Thursday at the Patent and Trademark Office. “Casting” video or audio content is a relatively “new initiative where content can be discovered” on laptops, tablets, smartphones or other devices “capable of finding content residing on networks or local storage,” says the application, which lists Vizio Chief Technology Officer Matthew Blake McRae as the sole inventor. When content is located, it can be played on the device that found it or “redirected” or “cast” to a second screen, “typically” a TV, monitor or virtual-reality device, it says. “Currently few if any casting agents can provide content encryption notifications to stream receivers for the stream or content to be casted,” it says. “This is often not a large concern for home environments but can present a significant issue with business environments. In the business environment, data cast to a display device can contain sensitive business information that would be relatively easy to compromise between the content server and the stream receiver.” The inventor recognized “it would be useful” to devise an encryption technique that would occur “on the fly,” such that the stream “would be encrypted prior to being transmitted and decrypted just after being received and just prior to being displayed,” the application says. Vizio representatives didn’t comment on ways the company might commercialize the invention.

Samsung’s Korean parent has applied to register the word “joiiii” -- all lower-case letters, including four i's -- as a trademark for a class of smart TV features and functions, Patent and Trademark Office documents show. The “joiiii” mark “consists of standard characters, without claim to any particular font, style, size, or color,” said the application (serial number 86925630) filed at the PTO Wednesday, two days after an identical application (number 015166259) was filed in Europe. Samsung wants to use the trademark for a class of “software applications for providing access to television and video programming via the Internet,” said its PTO application. The trademark also will be used for “software that allows display of information regarding television program, including program cast and crew, photos, event participants, sporting event statistics and analysis and live social commentary about television program or event,” the application said.

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste and five other conservative groups jointly urged House Judiciary Committee leaders Tuesday to support the Songwriter Equity Act (HR-1283), saying in a joint letter that the bill would “guarantee that a market-based standard is applied when setting licensing rates.” HR-1283, championed by House IP Subcommittee Vice Chairman Doug Collins, R-Ga., has been seen as the bill most likely to be affected by the Department of Justice's ongoing review of its existing consent decrees with the performing rights organizations American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Inc. (see 1501070052 and 1503040063). The conservative groups noted Justice's review of the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees, which date from 1941. “In today’s digital age, it is unreasonable for songwriter royalties to continue to be regulated by such an antiquated scheme,” the groups told House Judiciary. “The committee should reject calls for new regulations, which will ultimately discourage the marketplace from developing innovative licensing solutions, and instead focus on addressing the government’s role in royalty-setting.” The National Music Publishers' Association Tuesday praised the conservative groups' support for HR-1283. “Today songwriting is the most regulated part of the music industry. It makes no sense that in this day and age, the creators behind our favorite songs are constrained by centuries old laws and WWII-era regulations,” NMPA CEO David Israelite said in a statement. “Each songwriter is a small business owner who deserves to be able to negotiate the value of their intellectual property as other property owners can -- in a free market -- and I am pleased that these groups recognize that for music to continue to be made, our copyright system has to stop punishing those who make it.”

Industry's anticipated breadth and diversity of possible IoT products and services is contained in the 340-word description accompanying the trademark registration application for a certification compliance logo that the Open Interconnect Consortium submitted to the Patent and Trademark Office about a month before changing its name to the Open Connectivity Foundation (see 1602190059), PTO documents show. The “certification mark,” OIC said in the application (serial number 86877163) it filed Jan. 15, “is intended to certify that goods manufactured or distributed by authorized persons comply with designated standards pertaining to the Internet of Things.” Those goods and services could include such things as “metal garage doors,” “smart Wi-Fi speakers,” electronic “monitors that enable the interoperability of electrical and electronic devices of any kind via wireless communication,” “smart yoga mats” and even “DNA analysis devices for environmental, food and pathogen monitoring,” the application said. OIC “has a bona fide intention, and is entitled, to exercise legitimate control over the use of the certification mark in commerce by its authorized users on or in connection with the identified goods/services,” it told PTO. OIC itself “will not engage in the production or marketing of the goods/services to which the mark is applied, except to advertise or promote recognition of the certification program or of the goods/services that meet the certification standards of the applicant,” it said. The logo “consists of a miscellaneous design in a circular shape comprised of interlocking curved lines,” with no color claimed as a feature of the mark, OIC’s application said. The newly renamed OCF is "not sure yet" whether it still plans to use the logo that OIC applied for Jan. 15 or whether it will develop a new mark since it changed its name, even though the logo depicted in the PTO application bears no OIC branding or identifier, spokeswoman Danielle Tarp emailed us Monday. OCF expects the compliance logo program to be ready for launch this year, she said. A notice on the group’s website says its certification activities are “still in development.” OCF has said it’s working to “accelerate solutions leading to a single, open IoT interoperability specification.”