News and Commentary
Kerry Maeve Sheehan of the Author’s Alliance has a post detailing the problems with the CASE Act, which would create a small-claims court for copyright claims. While this may be a useful alternative to smaller creators without the resources to file a traditional infringement suit, rightsholders big and small would be able to use this system. Additionally, the nuances inherent to infringement claims make a small-claims court setting an inappropriate venue, and how the ease of filing a claim makes abuse by trolls easier.
Mike Masnick has a piece on Tech Dirt building off of this tweet by Annemarie Birdy. It’s about how a European soccer app spied on fans in the name of guarding against copyright infringement, but the broader implications of the piece are that an expansive and aggressive copyright regime necessitates an equally expansive and aggressive surveillance state to be effective.
Jane Clark and Bob Tourtellotte, creators of a 2015 horror movie, bemoan the threat of online piracy to their bottom line and come out in support of the CASE Act. They argue that infringement actions are expensive for rights holders (which is true), but despite railing about the danger of online piracy they offer no statistics on whether or not they were able to make their money back on the film.
Senator Marco Rubio has submitted legislation that would prevent the Chinese tech company Huawei from seeking damages in U.S. patent courts.
KC Green, creator of the “This is Fine” dog meme, is bemoaning the fact that his meme has been appropriated for political purposes and wants to retain some control over the viral meme that others are using.
New Research
The Anticpat blog has an analysis of abstract idea patent reversal of patent rejection rates for the past year. While reversal rates for rejections of patents that are too abstract came down slightly from a high of almost 40%, this reversal rate is still well above the roughly 10% it was a year ago.
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