News and Commentary
Membership in the License on Transfer (LOT) network continues to grow as IBM joins. Why? According to IBM, it’s about ensuring interoperability and avoiding the threat of litigation from non-practicing entities (NPEs, or “patent trolls.”)
The Indiana-based copyright troll Richard Bell, famous for suing over his Indianapolis skyline photo, has been halted in an Oregon court over infringement over the photo. Because a previous ruling found that he does not hold a valid copyright, the Oregon court found that he can no longer relitigate future infringement claims.
Apple and Broadcom were both found to have infringed upon CalTech’s patents, ordered to pay $838 million and $270 million, each. The patents infringed were related to a fix for the 802.11 WiFi’s data transmission. Both the companies plan to appeal.
Microsoft and Google have successfully challenged a patent related to downloading the “next file” while playing a prior file (similar to buffering) in inter partes review. The patent was invalidated due to obviousness.
Writing for EFF, Elliot Harmon argues that the likely copyright provisions of the USMCA, which Canada to extend its copyright terms, will favor large content producers due to the secretive nature of the proceedings. While they are pushing to adopt U.S.-style terms, they are unlikely to include provisions such as fair use.
In a particularly silly case of ContentID gone wrong, one YouTuber has been hit with a claim for infringing on the numbers “36” and “50”.
As EU member states get closer to implementing Article 17 (formerly Article 13) regulations that would require ContentID-style copyright filters, Mike Masnick points out one of the greatest pitfalls of these filters: false infringement claims.
New Research
A new paper by Oscar Borgogno and Giuseppe Colangelo find that there is no empirical evidence to support the notion that holdup and royalty stacking harms standard essential patent (SEP) licensing, making the justification for exceptional antitrust treatment for FRAND licensing, particularly in regard to waiving the rights to seek injections, weak.
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