​Amazon and Google patent applications “provide insight into the surveillance that is possible via smart home devices” like Amazon Echo and Google Home, with “troubling legal and ethical implications,” Consumer Watchdog reported Wednesday. CW conceded filing a patent application is no guarantee a company will commercialize inventions. It recalled that patent applications for the Google Glass and Amazon Kindle “seemed outlandish when they were filed,” until they resulted in “very real products for the applicants.” To "anticipate and meet consumers’ needs in new ways, digital assistants make increasingly invasive forays into users’ private lives. As users accept these intrusions, they give up their personal data, and with it, their privacy and security,” the study said. With the smaller-sized Echo Dot and Google Home Mini, Amazon and Google have “begun to foray beyond the living room and into the bedroom,” it said. “There, they can infer from your interactions with the device when you wake up -- and maybe even who you wake up with.” An Amazon patent application published Aug. 17 “describes using voice signatures and behavior to distinguish between members of a household,” said the report. “This could help Amazon determine whether to advertise birthday cake to your spouse or to your six-year-old.” A Google application published in October 2016 describes methods of speaker recognition through use of “neural networks." Google didn’t comment.

ATSC’s A/331 document on signaling, delivery, synchronization and error protection was approved Dec. 6 as a final 3.0 standard, said Monroe Electronics, which said the Advanced Emergency Alerting (AEA) specification “is based primarily on designs” it submitted. The document “specifies the technical mechanisms and procedures pertaining to service signaling and IP-based delivery of a variety of ATSC 3.0 services and contents to ATSC 3.0-capable receivers over broadcast, broadband and hybrid broadcast/broadband networks.” South Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute contributed IP, as did Fraunhofer, LG, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony and Technicolor. The AEA spec "is part of a non-proprietary standard," Ed Czarnecki, Monroe senior director-strategic and government affairs, told us Tuesday. "Our goal was to contribute an element in ATSC 3.0 that would enhance the overall value of next-gen TV.” AEA's messaging feature of A/331 will enable broadcasters “to leapfrog to IP-based, mobile, customizable, and media-rich emergency notifications to their audiences, with the potential for a range of first responder and public safety services,” said Czarnecki in a statement. It “will enable a vastly improved user experience for TV viewers when it comes to emergency alerts, whether they're watching through receivers on fixed screens, mobile phones, or portable devices such as tablets or vehicle-mounted displays,” said Monroe. Following FCC Nov. 16 authorization of 3.0 voluntary deployment, the goal of the Advanced Warning and Response Network Alliance is to have a "beta solution” on emergency alerting by early 2019 available for stations launching 3.0 broadcasts beginning in 2019 (see 1711200023).

Replies to a Copyright Office NPRMon cable royalty reporting are due Jan. 30, the CO announced Monday. Initial comments already were announced as being due Jan. 16 (see 1712040032). Stakeholders can also request meetings with the office on the matter, it said. The CO posted instructions on how to submit comments or request meetings.

Increased professionalism of video pirates means consumers sometimes don't realize they bought illicit streaming devices, Irdeto Senior Director-Cyber Services and Investigations Mark Mulready blogged Thursday. He said Rokus, Amazon Firesticks and Kodis have been popular devices for pirates, and Android TVs are gaining traction, with all those boxes' open nature helping in designing and installing illegal applications or add-ons. Pirates employ "slick looking websites" with access to legions of channels and movie titles with full support, some offering money-back guarantees, Mulready said: Such sites increasingly are moving from annual subscriptions to six-month offers allowing them to amend prices more regularly and ensure regular touch points with customers.

Global filings for patents, trademarks and industrial designs climbed to “record heights” in 2016 “amid soaring demand in China,” which processed more patent applications than the combined total for the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Europe, the World Intellectual Property Organization reported Wednesday. Inventors filed 3.1 million patent applications globally in 2016, an 8.3 percent increase from 2015. China received about 236,600 of the nearly 240,600 additional patent filings, accounting for 98 percent of total growth. China also drove the 16.4 percent increase in trademark applications to about 7 million, and the 10.4 percent increase in worldwide industrial design applications to nearly 1 million. Chinese patent authorities received a record 1.3 million patent applications in 2016 to lead the world, and the U.S. was a distant second with 606,000 applications filed. Rounding out the top five in patent applications filed: (1) Japan, with 318,000; (2) South Korea, 209,000; (3) Europe, 159,000. On a per-capita basis, Germany was the global leader, followed by Japan, South Korea, the U.S. and China.

SiriusXM properly interpreted gross revenue exclusions that satellite radio service can use when calculating royalty payments owed to SoundExchange to apply to pre-1972 sound recordings but improperly excluded certain revenue from its gross revenue royalty base, the Copyright Royalty Judges said in a regulatory interpretation published in Thursday's Federal Register. The interpretation was in response to a referral by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. CRJ judges also deferred to the court to determine whether SiriusXM had "a consistent, transparent, reasonable methodology" for valuing the exclusions applied to pre-'72 sound recordings.

While Apple pins faith on facial recognition to unlock iPhones, Samsung is going back to basics with fingerprint sensing -- with a twist. Samsung’s plan, as described in U.S. patent application 2017/0336906 published Thanksgiving Day at the Patent and Trademark Office, is to make a smartphone's touch screen of conventional appearance function also as a fingerprint sensor by switching resolution. If the captured scan image of the fingertip matches a reference image the owner previously stored, the phone unlocks and switches the screen back to normal touch control, it said. By reducing the screen area that needs to be scanned in high resolution, “speedy fingerprint recognition becomes possible,” it said. The manufacturer didn’t comment.

The International Trade Commission is issuing a limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders banning import and sale of Comcast X1 set-top boxes, it said. The commission said Comcast DVRs infringe Rovi patents, in a Tariffs Act Section 337 investigation it began in May 2016(see 1706150042). The ITC won't require a bond for import of subject DVRs from Comcast during the 60 days the Trump administration has to review the exclusion order, it said in Tuesday's Federal Register. Rovi never disputed that the cable operator or its predecessors independently developed the X1 platform and its cloud- and app-based technology, a spokeswoman for Comcast said: "While we believe the ITC reached the wrong decision, we will remove this feature from those offered to our subscribers while we pursue an appeal.”

The International Trade Commission began a Tariffs Act Section 337 investigation into allegations that Apple computers and mobile devices infringe patents held by Aqua Connect and subsidiary Strategic Technology Partners, the ITC announced Tuesday. In a complaint filed Oct. 10, the two companies said Apple Mac computers running macOS 10.7 or above, Apple iPhones, iPads and iPods running iOS 5 or above, and Apple TV products, second generation and above, copy Strategic Technology Partners’ patented screen sharing technology. The ITC will consider whether to issue a cease and desist order against Apple, as well as a limited exclusion order banning import of Apple products that infringe the patents. Aqua Connect and Strategic Technology Partners sought a temporary cease and desist order and a temporary exclusion order while the ITC considers the case. Apple didn't comment Wednesday.

The Copyright Office published a rule establishing a separate, lower filing fee for recording documents when submitted with an electronic title list, such as a list of certain indexing information about the relevant works to which such documents pertain. The reduced fee should incentivize use of these lists and increase administrative efficiency, the office said.