South Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute joined HEVC Advance, the one-stop-shop H.265 patent pool announced Tuesday. The licensor follows Samsung to become the second new member under an option for licensors to hold dual memberships in HEVC Advance and rival MPEG LA H.265 (see 1704050046).
Sharp Electronics seeks a ban on imports of Hisense smart TVs that allegedly infringe its patents, said a Tarrif Act Section 337 complaint filed Aug. 29 on which the International Trade Commission seeks comment by Sept. 13, according to Tuesday's Federal Register. Sharp has a trademark license agreement with Hisense that allows Hisense to make and sell Sharp-branded smart TVs, but Sharp says Hisense uses the same technologies to make smart sets under its own brand, violating patents. Hisense didn't comment.
The Copyright Royalty Board will begin a proceeding to determine distribution of digital audio recording technology royalty fees in the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Musical Works Funds, said a Friday notice in the Federal Register. Potential participants should file petitions and filing fees by Oct. 2, said the notice.
The U.S. will post intellectual property experts in the coming weeks to provide regional cooperation in Abuja, Nigeria; Bangkok; Bucharest; Hong Kong; and Sao Paulo, said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at an Interpol's international IP crime conference in New York Tuesday. He said Justice will respond more quickly to mutual legal assistance requests from other countries. The department is strengthening its ability to pursue charges through its U.S. attorney's offices and roughly 260 computer hacking and IP coordinators across the country and has developed a Cybercrime Lab, he said.
Monday’s announcement that Fox, Panasonic and Samsung will form a licensable certification and logo program built around Samsung’s HDR10+ dynamic-metadata high dynamic range platform (see 1708280018) was “definitely an attempt to give the industry an option for an open standard that could be further developed and one that’s royalty-free.” So said Danny Kaye, Fox Film Corp. executive vice president, when we asked him after Panasonic’s IFA news conference in Berlin Wednesday whether the HDR10+ licensing program was meant to give the industry an alternative to the proprietary, royalty-bearing Dolby Vision offering. Fox, Panasonic and Samsung will seek wide deployment of the HDR10+ licensing program once license terms are announced publicly at CES, Kaye told us. “We hope everybody adopts it,” he said. “That’s the intent of something like this with an open standard, to get as many device manufacturers, chip manufacturers, content providers, as possible, and that’s what we’ll try to attain.” The “ease of authoring” content with HDR10+ will lead to many more HDR films “becoming available” than previously thought, said Michiko Ogawa, who runs Panasonic's home entertainment business.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a lower court's 2016 preliminary injunction against online streaming service VidAngel (see 1708240017) was unsurprising, but the unequivocal decision should be welcomed by many copyright owners, Copyright Alliance Vice President-Legal Policy Terry Hart blogged Monday. The 9th Circuit ruling might not be the end of the litigation, since VidAngel retained "high-powered" attorney David Quinto and has been active on Capitol Hill, Hart said. He said VidAngel likely will file for en banc review by the 9th Circuit and then petition the Supreme Court unless it reaches a settlement agreement with studios. VidAngel didn't comment.
LG is “substantially” underpaying the royalties it owes on Advanced Audio Coding product shipments since signing a January 2009 patent licensing agreement to use the audio-compression technology, and has thwarted auditors from examining its “books and records,” alleged Via Licensing (in Pacer) Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Oakland. Via runs the AAC patent pool for parent Dolby Labs and Ericsson, Microsoft, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic and others. LG “breached its obligations to cooperate, and refused to allow a full and fair audit of its sales” under the license agreement, it said. LG didn’t comment Friday. The license sets a “standard” royalty fee structure that starts at 98 cents a unit for the first 500,000 AAC devices shipped in any country globally, and scales down to 10 cents a unit for device quantities of 75 million units or more.
Samsung withdrew its European application to register “HDR10" as a trademark Aug. 16, weeks after the EU Intellectual Property Office, acting on opposition from LG Electronics, ruled the application “not eligible,” according to documents on EUIPO’s website (login required). Months earlier, Samsung abandoned an attempt (see 1703150031) to register HDR10 at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Samsung declined to comment Thursday. After late-March publication of the application, EUIPO received “third party observations” from LG that “give rise to serious doubts concerning the eligibility of the trade mark for registration and therefore the Office decided to re-examine the application,” the agency told Samsung in an Aug. 1 letter.
Digital Media Licensing Association joined the Copyright Alliance, the alliance announced Wednesday. Established in 1951, DMLA supports copyright protections 100-plus members who own, manage and license visual content.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer should ensure IP rights of Americans are "afforded, protected and enforced at the highest levels" when renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, said House IP Subcommittee Vice Chairman Doug Collins, R-Ga., and Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., in a Tuesday letter to him. They urged Lighthizer to promote strong copyright protection standards similar to those in the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, keep the U.S.'s long-standing stance on copyright exceptions language without open-ended balance provisions, and advance "responsible" internet partnership between platforms without outdated safe harbor provisions. They said Canada adopted "sweeping" copyright exceptions with a weak safe harbor system, and Mexico has high piracy rates and enforcement problems. Foreign countries have enacted laws "that harm the market for American works. NAFTA should not exacerbate this problem, but, rather, be the first step in correcting it," they wrote. The letter said copyright-intensive industries contributed $1.2 trillion and supplied 5.6 million jobs in 2015 to the U.S. economy.