The Copyright Royalty Board published a final rule in Tuesday's Federal Register reinstating rules that ease the requirements for noncommercial broadcasters and commercial broadcasters to report streamed sound recordings to SoundExchange for royalty purposes when either pays no more than the $500 minimum annual royalty. The CRB proposed the technical amendment in August to reinstate the previously allowed reporting relief requirements, which were inadvertently rescinded in a June technical amendment (see 1608100020). The CRB said it received comments from the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System and a joint filing from the National Association of Broadcasters and the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee that didn't oppose the relief reinstatement amendment.

The Patent and Trademark Office's Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative and other initiatives aimed at improving patent quality are “here to stay” despite the upcoming change in White House administration, Director Michelle Lee said Tuesday. PTO officials “will be working hard to keep this snowball moving forward and growing,” Lee said during an agency event, according to a prepared version of her remarks. “Stakeholder input and collaboration from around the country -- and indeed, from around the world, including with our counterpart offices overseas -- will continue to be vital to our efforts.” PTO's efforts to improve patent quality have been aimed at issuing patents that are “correct in accordance with the law,” clearly delineate “the patent's boundaries” and are “issued consistently” across examiners, Lee said. “There is a cost to society when the USPTO issues a patent that should not issue, just as there is a cost to society when we don’t issue a patent that should issue. With patents that are overly broad or vague, we create inefficiencies and opportunities for abuse. With patents that are unduly narrow, we discourage incentives to innovate. At a time when IP is more important to our economy than ever before, neither is an option, we have to get this right.”

House Judiciary Committee leaders’ policy proposal on Copyright Office operations and IT continued to draw a mix of praise and concern from stakeholders Thursday after its unveiling. It calls for the CO to have more autonomy from the Library of Congress and for changes to the process for selecting a Register of Copyrights to lead the office, plus seeks an alternative copyright small claims process in line with a 2013 CO proposal (see 1612080061). NAB believes the document from House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and committee ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich., is “an important step forward” in the committee’s copyright legislative review, said CEO Gordon Smith. “As proposals from leadership in both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees recognize, a modern [CO] is essential to the ability of copyright owners and users to effectively serve consumers in today's digital marketplace.” The National Music Publishers’ Association hopes the “announcement signals a move towards making the necessary updates to copyright law that finally would allow songwriters to be paid fairly for their work,” said CEO David Israelite. Public Knowledge has “some significant questions and potential concerns” with the Goodlatte/Conyers plan, said General Counsel Ryan Clough. “Like any other government agency -- particularly one with a documented history of regulatory capture -- the [CO] needs rigorous accountability and oversight. It is unclear whether the current proposal would eliminate all supervision by the Librarian of Congress, making the [CO] a free-floating regulatory agency housed within the legislative branch.” The small claims plan “will require substantial further deliberation,” Clough said. “It is critical that Congress not create a new litigation process that copyright trolls could hijack. It is also unclear why this new forum for lawsuits should be housed within the legislative branch as opposed to other federal courts.”

The National Music Publishers' Association said it reached agreement with YouTube for the payment of unclaimed royalties for videos using music whose ownership wasn't previously known. The agreement, which takes effect next year, will result in the disbursement of millions in previously unclaimed nonperformance royalties, NMPA said Thursday. The opt-in period for music publishers begins Monday and lasts through Feb. 28, NMPA said. YouTube will provide participating publishers after the opt-in period with a list of songs it previously didn't have ownership information for, NMPA said. Publishers will initially be able to claim royalties during a three-month window on those songs for the period Aug. 1, 2012-Dec. 31, 2015. Royalties undistributed after the claim window will be disbursed based on each publisher's market share and revenue paid for known YouTube usage figures during the same period, NMPA said. Future royalty claims will be calculated based on 12-month YouTube usage periods between Jan. 1, 2016, and Dec. 31, 2019, NMPA said. “It is essential that we work with digital services like YouTube … to fix the challenge of incomplete ownership information to ensure royalties are no longer unmatched and music owners are paid accurately by the platforms that rely on their work,” said NMPA President David Israelite in a news release. “The revenue earned by the music industry on YouTube continues to grow significantly year over year, and we're committed to making sure that publishers are paid for the usage of their works on their platform,” said Tamara Hrivnak, YouTube head-music partnerships, Americas, in the news release.

SiriusXM's recent move to settle Flo & Eddie's lawsuit against the music service in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles “has the potential to solidify the dominant position of big music services … at the expense of new music services, independent and Web-based radio stations, and the listening public,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz in a blog post. Flo & Eddie, the owners of the Turtles' “Happy Together” and the duo's other music, filed a notice with the court last week saying Sirius agreed to pay at least $25 million to settle the California class-action lawsuit, in which the artists and other artists in the class sought compensation for performances of their pre-1972 recordings. The settlement amount could reach as high as $99 million depending on future outcomes (see 1611290054). EFF was involved with the suits, arguing the potential “pitfalls that could come from creating new state copyright law rights,” Stoltz said. EFF said in its brief to the Florida Supreme Court in that court's review of the on-hold Florida case from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that “judicial creation of a new exclusive right for works that have been publicly performed without restriction for more than 40 years will put Florida at odds with federal policy and that of most other states, complicating the business of digital music delivery. Accommodating the numerous stakeholders and interests involved is a task for the legislature, not the courts.” The legal “landscape is now more uncertain for music services and radio stations who aren’t” Sirius, Stoltz said. “The different states could still reach different answers to the question of whether those services must pay royalties for the performance of pre-1972 recordings.” If any of the courts “decide that state law covers those performances, music services and radio stations will have to begin the complex process of negotiating terms and royalties -- and that process will likely involve more expensive litigation,” Stoltz said. “Sirius XM, meanwhile, has already secured permission to play any pre-1972 recording on its service at predictable royalty rates for years to come, giving it a major advantage over new music services.” Sirius didn't comment.

“It's imperative that we continue pushing to protect” IP rights, said House Commerce Committee Vice Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., at a news conference about an International Intellectual Property Alliance report that core copyright industries contributed $1.2 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product during 2015. The report “will help” the House Judiciary Committee in its work on possible legislation for its Copyright Act modernization review, said committee ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich. These are “tangible metrics” of the value of IP to the U.S. economy as House Judiciary considers its next steps on copyright legislation, said House IP Subcommittee Vice Chairman Doug Collins, R-Ga. Major U.S. copyright holders' sales of products to overseas markets increased to almost $177 billion in 2015, from $164 billion in 2014 and almost $155 billion in 2013, IIPA said.

The Copyright Office sought comment Thursday on an NPRM on amendments to its rules on supplementary registration. Most copyright applicants would be required under the amended rules to submit an online application in order to correct or “amplify” the information included in the basic registration application, the CO said in a Federal Register notice. “Paper applications are extremely burdensome for both applicants and the Office,” the CO said. “Increasing demand on the Office’s limited resources causes delays in issuing supplementary registrations, and it prevents specialists from examining other types of claims thereby increasing the overall backlog within the Office.” The filing fee for supplementary applications would rise from $100 to $130 under the proposal, the CO said. The revised section also would update rules on when the CO may decline supplementary registrations and update practices regarding cross-references in the CO’s public record, the office said. The new rule would clarify that the CO may “decline to issue a supplementary registration for a basic registration that covered the first twenty-eight years of the copyright term, because any registration issued before January 1, 1978 has expired by now,” the CO said. “Allowing interested parties to correct or amplify the information in a registration after the initial term expired creates a potential for error, mistake, or even fraud.” Comments on the NPRM are due Jan. 3.

The Department of Commerce's Internet Policy Task Force scheduled a meeting for Dec. 9 to facilitate a “constructive” stakeholder discussion about “ways to promote a more robust and collaborative digital marketplace for copyrighted works,” the IPTF and NTIA said Thursday. The meeting could result in the creation of a multistakeholder process with working groups to “tackle specific issues,” IPTF said. The gathering will “focus on initiatives in this space that relate to standards development, interoperability across digital registries, and cross-industry collaboration, to understand the current state of affairs, identify challenges, and discuss paths forward,” IPTF said. “It will also be an opportunity to explore potential approaches to the future adoption and integration into the online marketplace of relevant emerging technologies, such as blockchain technology and open-source platforms.” The event is to run 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Patent and Trademark Office's Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters. IPTF issued a white paper in January that recommended Congress pass legislation to amend guidance to courts for determining statutory damages in copyright infringement cases. It supported the Copyright Office's 2013 proposal to establish a small claims copyright court but opposed using legislation to address remixes’ status within the fair-use doctrine and digital transmissions’ place in the existing first-sale doctrine (see 1601280065).

Customs and Border Protection ruled a redesign of network switches imported by Arista Networks falls outside of an International Trade Commission limited exclusion order (LEO). The CBP ruled in favor of Arista, which is in litigation with Cisco over patent infringement allegations. The ITC began a formal Tariff Act Section 337 enforcement investigation in October after Cisco filed a complaint that Arista ignored the LEO, which prohibits imports of patent-infringing products (see 1610040060). Based on CBP's highly technical review of the Arista switches and the patents at issue, the agency said "the infringing functionality has been removed and that Arista has carried its burden to establish that the articles in question are not covered by the patents at issue and therefore do not, on this basis, fall within the scope of the LEO." The decision "validates our good-faith efforts to address the ITC’s findings," said Arista General Counsel Marc Taxay in an emailed statement. "We look forward to resuming the importation of our redesigned products.” CBP "issued instructions to the U.S. ports to permit entry of the Company’s redesigned products for consumption and sale in the United States," Arista said in a Nov. 21 SEC filing. This week, Cisco said it remains concerned with redesigned products imported by Arista, noting the first company's CBP complaint said "'the claim of a workaround is a thin veil to cover Arista’s ongoing infringement and convince its customers, many of whom have strongly supported protection of intellectual property rights, that they are buying a product that is non-infringing,'” emailed a spokesman. "The enforcement case continues with an initial ruling expected in June 2017 and the ITC is not bound by the customs decision.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration “will have a remarkable opportunity to re-think the policies of several prior administrations” on communications, IP and tech issues given the Trump presidential campaign’s lack of a clear agenda on most tech sector issues, said Tom Sydnor, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute's Center for Internet, Communications and Technology, in a blog post Wednesday. An “aggressive approach” to U.S. cybersecurity “will be essential,” Sydnor said. “Ordinary US citizens who take at least reasonable measures to protect their proprietary and privacy rights should be able to enforce them in practice at least within the US -- with or without the help of their state and federal governments.” The Trump administration’s commitment to end “crony capitalism” should extend to IP rights and other areas of information and communications sector-related policy, Sydnor said. “Focus on ensuring that private property rights -- including IP rights -- remain enforceable and enforced, even on the internet, and consider repealing laws or regulations that attempt to impose one-sided controls on two-sided relationships between businesses that should be expected to settle their differences in the marketplace,” he said. “These two principles, consistently applied, would do much to improve technology law and policy and reduce regulatory arbitrage.”