Textbook Publishers Revamp Ebooks to Fight Used Market (4-traders)
A booming market for used college textbooks has saved students much money, but forced publishers to turn to a new, digital model of online versions of their texts.

Congress Betrays 3M to Google Over Patent Fees With Cuts (Bloomberg)
Google and 3M are among the top patent-holding companies that agreed two years ago to pay higher fees if Congress let the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office use the funds to address a work backlog and improve application scrutiny, but the companies are crying foul now that Congress has instead held back as much as $148 million in fees due to automatic federal spending cuts.

Viacom Demands New Judge in YouTube Copyright Fight (The Hollywood Reporter)
Viacom filed papers at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and made the case why its long-running dispute against YouTube deserves another chance, despite having been dismissed twice on summary judgment.

AP, Meltwater Settle Copyright Dispute (USA Today)
The Associated Press says it has settled a copyright-infringement lawsuit against digital news distributor Meltwater and that the two companies will begin developing products together.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.2

Ruling: Amazon Can’t Own ‘.Amazon’ (The Wall Street Journal)
ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee recommended against Amazon taking control of the ‘.Amazon’ domain, perhaps in part because of objections from Latin American countries served by the Amazon River.

Why Startups Are Sporting Increasingly Quirky Names (The Wall Street Journal)
With about 252 million domain names currently registered across the Internet, short, recognizable dot-com Web addresses have long been taken, prompting startup companies to come up with misspelled, made-up, and mashed-up names.

Google, Amazon.com Win Appeal to Toss Internet Patents (Bloomberg)
Google and Amazon won a U.S. appeals court ruling in a case of a former university researcher who claimed his patents covered some of the Internet’s most basic interactive functions.

Charts: How Spotify is Killing Music Piracy (paidContent)
Online music service Spotify published a report that shows that piracy in the Netherlands has gone down just as Spotify has become more popular in the country.

Is Flipboard a Partner or a Competitor For Publishers and Content Creators? Yes (paidContent)
With the launch of a web version, Flipboard highlights how far it has evolved from its early days as a standalone app, and how it is both a partner and a potential competitor for content companies.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.

White House, Tech Giants Aim to Keep Online Ads Off Rogue Sites (CNET) The White House and eight major tech companies unveiled best practices for online ad networks aimed at cutting off revenue to websites selling counterfeit goods or engaging in copyright piracy. Read the White House release here.

Has Patent, Will Sue – An Alert to Corporate America (The New York Times) Inside the mind of a patent troll – IPNav, owned by Erich Spangenberg, is a Dallas-based company that helps “turn idle patents into cash cows,” with its typical client an inventor or corporation demanding a license fee from an infringer.

Goodreads Hit With Copyright Suit Over Fan Photo (paidContent) Photo agency BWP Media has filed a copyright lawsuit against Amazon’s Goodreads site over a celebrity image posted by one of the site’s members.

Executives are Biggest Risk for Copyright Infringement (Fort Mill Times) A recent study found that nearly half the executives surveyed for the study are potentially exposing their organizations to the risk of copyright infringement violations.

RIAA Wants Infamous File-Sharer to Campaign Against Piracy (Wired) The RIAA offered music file-sharer Jammie Thomas-Rasset a reduction of her $222,000 fine if she agreed to make a public statement against piracy.

Broadcasters Lose Final Appeal to Take Down Aereo (Ars Technica)
A coalition of broadcasters, in its suit against Aereo, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to take their case “en banc,” but the court declined.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.

France Eliminates Threat to Cut Off Internet Pirates (Reuters)
The French government has published an official decree to erase the controversial provision in a copyright piracy law that allowed the courts to cut off Internet access of repeat offenders.

Where the Wild Things Are Sequel Pulled From Kickstarter for Infringing Copyright (paidContent)
A sequel to Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are was pulled from Kickstarter after publisher HarperCollins issued a takedown notice. The incident suggests that book publishers are being more vigilant about monitoring new platforms for violations.

Intellectual Property Court Opens in Moscow (The Moscow Times)
The Intellectual Property Court, a specialized arbitration court, opened in Moscow after President Vladimir Putin approved the final list of judges. The court will deal with cases regarding patent rights, trademark violations and other intellectual property disputes.

Why Patent Litigation Was On the Upswing In 2012 (Information Today)
A recent study from PricewaterhouseCoopers reports that 2012 was a “banner year in patent litigation,” largely in part due to “patent trolls.”

Microsoft Settles Thousands of Software Piracy Cases (CNET)
Microsoft announced it settled 3,265 software piracy cases worldwide in the past year. Thirty-five of these cases were in the U.S., in 19 different states; and, 3,230 were international cases that took place in 42 different countries.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.

Last week, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez announced that the FTC should use its authority under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act to study patent troll activities and pledged the FTC’s commitment to protecting small businesses from deceptive patent troll practices, by using its authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act.

Ramirez explained that the patent troll problem “isn’t just growing.  It’s changing shape;” pointing out that “retailers and financial services providers that incorporate software into their products and services are now common targets” for patent troll lawsuits.  She voiced her concern that these trolls may be using false claims to target small businesses to induce payment of illegitimate licensing fees.  This happens when a troll asserts a patent that it “has no ownership interest in, or standing to assert, any patent rights; has only an expired patent; or makes false threats of litigation.”

For several years now, the FTC has played a crucial role in helping policymakers better understand the impact of patent troll behavior.  The Chairwoman’s remarks were an encouraging sign that the FTC remains committed to shedding more light on the patent troll problem and potentially joining the battle against patent trolls by bringing enforcement actions against them under its existing consumer protection authority.

Senator Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, followed up with Chairwoman Ramirez in a letter urging the FTC to “more aggressively pursue enforcement actions against patent trolls under its existing consumer protection authority and create a website for small businesses to report abuse.”  We join Chairman Leahy in urging the FTC to take action under Sections 6(b) and 5 of the FTC Act.  In doing so, however, we do raise a cautionary flag — action by the FTC should not be cause to delay potential legislative action to address this growing and significant problem.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.

SIIA Says Obama Administration’s IP Enforcement Strategy Will Advance Efforts on Software Compliance, Domain Name Expansion and Other Key Issues

SIIA commented on the IP Enforcement Strategy announced by Victoria Espinel, the Administration’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. Keith Kupferschmid, senior vice president of intellectual property and enforcement for SIIA, commented:

“The new Administration plan addresses a wide range of IP enforcement issues, offering numerous specific actions by federal agencies aimed at helping to protect and advance creativity and innovation. We look forward to seeing the Administration move quickly on the actions they have proposed.

We are particularly focused on the plan’s continued call for software compliance throughout the federal government. While we commend the plan’s continued emphasis on software compliance, we are disappointed that it does not likewise address content compliance. We have pushed the Administration to act on both software and content compliance, and will continue to seek Executive action that includes content.”

Enforcement News

Public-Transit Group Files Suit Against Patent Trolls (The Wall Street Journal)
The American Public Transportation Association filed suit in federal court against a pair of foreign-chartered firms that have threatened or filed patent infringement claims against public-transit systems, alleging that the so-called patent trolls are squeezing cash out of the nation’s largest transit agencies by suing over schedule alerts.

Pirate Bay Founder Sentenced in Sweden (The New York Times)
Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, was sentenced to two years in jail on Thursday for hacking into computers at a company that manages data for Swedish authorities and making illegal online money transfers.

Intellectual Ventures Sues Motorola Mobility, Again (CNET)
Intellectual Ventures, the controversial company that has made headlines for accumulating a massive trove of software and design patents, sued Motorola Mobility again, accusing the company of violating several of its patents covering file transferring and image projection technology.

Appeals Court Upholds College Student’s $675,000 Piracy Penalty (The Hollywood Reporter)
In the long-running case of Joel Tenenbaum, who was ordered in 2009 by a jury to pay $675,000 for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs online, the First Circuit Court of Appeals decided on Tuesday that the penalty should stand.

Pre-Roll Ads Can Be Patented, Appeals Court Rules in Hulu Case (GigaOM)
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the country’s top patent court, has ruled that playing an ad before someone watches a piece of content on the Internet is not an abstract idea, but is the subject of a valid patent.

Western Union and the IACC Team Up to Help Prevent Online Counterfeit Sales (PYMNTS.com)
Western Union and the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition announced an alliance to help identify and prevent the sale of counterfeit goods through the IACC Payment Processor Portal Program, which will provide a system for intellectual property rights-holders to report the sale of illegal counterfeit goods.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.

Baltimore Man Sentenced to Prison for Copyright Infringement (FBI.gov)
A Baltimore man was sentenced to 87 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for conspiring to and infringing copyrights by illegally reproducing and distributing over 1,000 copyrighted commercial software programs totaling $4 million.

Photographer Sues BuzzFeed for $3.6M Over Viral Sharing Model (paidContent)
An Idaho photographer is suing BuzzFeed for $3.6M in copyright damages, claiming BuzzFeed is liable not only for the unauthorized photo that appeared on its site, but also for “contributory infringement” because the site’s viral news model encourages readers to share the content they find.

New Ebook DRM Will Change the Text of a Story to Prevent Piracy (paidContent)
German researchers are working on a new DRM system that would prevent piracy by changing the actual text of a story, swapping out words to make individualized copies that could be tracked by the original owner of the ebook.

This One Page Could End the Copyright War Over ‘Happy Birthday’ (NPR)
The birthday song is still under copyright protection, but a lawsuit filed in federal court last week seeks to change that. The complaint argues that the copyright to the song, if it ever existed at all, expired no later than 1921.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.