News and Commentary
The News Media Alliance has joined the coalition of pro-rightsholder organizations in an amicus brief for Oracle in Google v. Oracle.
The Copyright Royalty Judges will publish a new rule setting the rates and terms for digital performances by subscription services of sound recordings.
Here’s an interesting twist in the FTC v. Qualcomm case. When arguing that Qualcomm’s “no license, no chips” (where purchasers of chips had to also pay patent royalties), Judge Consuelo Callahan stated that the practice was “overly capitalistic but not necessarily anti competitive[.]” In this intersection of intellectual property and antitrust law, the additional royalty functioned as a tax Qualcomm used to squeeze the smartphone market.
Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has announced his intention to continue with his patent infringement suit against Google for allegedly infringing on their invention to play music across multiple rooms. Sonos’s shares prices have increased significantly following a strong performance during the holiday shopping season. This could potentially be a sign of investors anticipating a successful infringement claim by Sonos or a lucrative settlement.
The dividing line between a copyright troll and a bona fide claim of infringement is the legal strategy pursued–the latter traditionally has nothing to hide. In this case, Strike 3 Holdings, upon realizing its claim against an anonymous defendant was weak, attempted to get the case dismissed without prejudice, denying the defendant prevailing party status. This failed, and due to the bad-faith dismissal attempt on the part of Strike 3 they will be forced to pay $40,000 in attorney’s fees.
Speaking of bad-faith copyright trolls, Richard Liebowitz’s latest example of courtroom shenaniganry involves switching plaintiffs mid-lawsuit. The details of the case are also ridiculous (it involves Rachel Dolezal, the nuances of Instagram licensing, and a solid fair use defense on the part of the defendant).
Here’s a great post from the U.S. Courts summarizing trends in copyright, patent, and trademark litigation over the past 20 years with a wealth of statistics for court filings on each. Since 1996, Trademark filings have held steady; patent filings shot up immediately following the America Invents Act, but have since fallen; copyright filings have fluctuated, with a significant uptick in 2018.
New Research
A new paper from R Street Institute’s Caleb Watney discusses how barriers to entry can be lowered in the development of Artificial Intelligence. Of particular interest is the necessity to clarify and expand fair use with respect to accessing training data, which is often protected by copyright.
A new paper from South Centre examines how African nations have adapted to TRIPS in the 18 years since the Doha Declaration, both in their adoption of the framework and how they can work within the flexibility allowed to optimize public health policies.
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