ICANN Reveals List Of Domain Name Applicants (The Washington Post)
ICANN released its list detailing who has applied for new Web suffixes. The applicants were heavily concentrated in North America and Europe, and include such companies as Apple, Amazon, and Google, as well as Macy’s, Walmart, and Tiffany.

Anti-Piracy Patent Stops Students From Sharing Textbooks (TorrentFreak)
A new patent awarded this week to an economics professor aims to stop students from sharing textbooks, both off and online. Under his proposal, students would only be able to participate in courses if they buy an online access code which would allow them to use the course book.

MPAA “Sympathetic” To Users Who Uploaded Legal Files (The Verge)
An Eastern Virginia District Court is currently deciding if users should be granted access to their legal Megaupload data. The MPAA says if the court allows access for users to retrieve their files, the mechanism for doing so must include safeguards that ensure no illegally uploaded material is released.

Pinterest Hires Former Top Google Lawyer To Head Of Legal (Los Angeles Times)
Pinterest has hired Google’s former deputy general counsel, Michael Yang, to be its head of legal, likely because of looming threats regarding copyrighted images pinned on the website.

Google Ends Legal Dispute With French Authors Over Book Scans (Bloomberg)
Google reached an agreement with a French publishing trade group and a French authors’ association that ends a dispute dating back to 2006 over the publishing of snippets of books on the Internet.

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

NY Judge Grants Class Certification For Authors In Fight Against Google (The Washington Post)
A federal judge in New York has granted class certification to authors challenging Google over its plans for the world’s largest digital library. Judge Denny Chin ruled in a written decision that class action is “more efficient and effective than requiring thousands of authors to sue individually.”

Judge Says 37 Oracle APIs Are Not Copyrightable (CNET)
In a ruling in the Oracle vs. Google case, a district court judge says the 37 Java APIs at question are not copyrightable. Oracle plans to appeal the ruling.

Tides Turn For Kim Dotcom? (The Wall Street Journal)
Kim Dotcom, who once seemed like an underdog in the U.S.’s largest-ever criminal copyright case, has notched several legal wins, including being granted access to authorities’ evidence against him.

Google Execs: We’re Doing Everything We Can To Stop Piracy (VentureBeat)
In response to Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel’s claim that Google is failing to police content theft, Google executive Susan Wojcicki said Google is doing everything it can to combat content piracy, and Hollywood needs to step up and help.

Outlook for TPP Deal in 2012 Uncertain as Dallas Discussions Conclude
This round of discussions for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement concluded in Dallas on May 16 with indications that a deal might not be possible this year. The sticking points include two of SIIAs priorities for the negotiation–strong copyright protections and a proposal to ensure the free flow of electronic information across borders. On May 17, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held an oversight hearing on the TPP progress where business representatives confirmed the difficulties in moving ahead with the U.S. proposal on IP protection. Negotiators meet informally in June on the margins of a get-together of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group in Kazan, Russia. The next formal round of negotiations is scheduled for San Diego July 2-10.

G8 Leaders’ Joint Declaration on Global Economy Highlights Importance of IPR
President Obama and the other members of the G-8 leadership released a joint statement this weekend declaring the pressing need for diligent protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights while committing to preserve and encourage the free exchange of information. The statement reads, “[g]iven the importance of intellectual property rights (IPR) to stimulating job and economic growth, we affirm the significance of high standards for IPR protection and enforcement, including through international legal instruments and mutual assistance agreements, as well as through government procurement processes, private-sector voluntary codes of best practices, and enhanced customs cooperation, while promoting the free flow of information.” The full G-8 Declaration can be found here.

Other IP News

Supreme Court Passes On File-Sharing Case, But Still No End Is In Sight (The New York Times)
The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal in one of the record industry’s longest-running cases over unauthorized file-sharing, effectively letting a $675,000 jury verdict stand against former Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum.

U.S. “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Scheme Delayed (TorrentFreak)
A plan being implemented by the Center for Copyright Information and major ISPs to stop the rampant problem of file-sharing over BitTorrent will launch later than the expected July start date.

A Kinder, Gentler DRM? (paidContent)
The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the organization that oversees the EPUB e-book format, hopes to create an industry standard for “lightweight content protection” and is taking the first steps by launching a discovery process.

ICANN Targets May 22 To Reopen Web Address Application System (The Hill)
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said it expects to reopen its application system on May 22 after a glitch forced the organization to temporarily stop accepting applications for new Web domain endings.

Court: Schools Can Publish Small Excerpts Of Texts Online For Students (eCampus News)
U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans sided with Georgia State University on a range of copyright infringement claims filed by Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications and Cambridge University Press, in a ruling that administrators said could set an important precedent regarding the “fair use doctrine” and how educational material is used by schools.

Member Of Internet Piracy Group ‘IMAGINE’ Pleads Guilty To Copyright Infringement Conspiracy (US ICE)
A California man pleaded guilty to conspiring to willfully reproduce and distribute tens of thousands of infringing copies of copyrighted works without permission, and faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release.

Backed By Microsoft, Russian Anti-Piracy Firm Pirate Pay Eyes International Expansion (VentureBeat)
Anti-piracy firm Pirate Pay, which aims to tackle Bittorrent piracy by confusing clients and preventing users from connecting to each other, is planning to expand its foreign operations and spearhead the ongoing fight against online piracy.

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

Report: Online Counterfeit Sales To Overtake Street Vendors (National Journal)
More counterfeit goods will soon be sold online than on the street, according to the latest report by the U.S. Trade Representative.

Advertisers pledge not to support ‘rogue’ pirate sites (The Hill)
Two major advertising trade associations released a set of best practices on Thursday to ensure that companies do not place ads on websites dedicated to offering illegal copies of movies and music.

Google, authors go head to head over digital books (Reuters)
Google Inc, in a long-running legal dispute over its plans to create a digital library of books, argued in court on Thursday that associations of authors and photographers should not be allowed to sue the company as a group.

Tech Firms Crowd-Source to Fight Suits (Wall Street Journal)
Tech giants like Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc., along with several start-ups, have tapped Article One Partners LLC to crowd-source evidence that a patent they are being sued for allegedly infringing isn’t novel. Proving so in court can invalidate a patent.

OSS adoption in emerging markets encouraging but doesn’t combat piracy (ZDNet Asia)
Open source software (OSS) has picked up in the region with different levels of adoption in different countries, however, it is not a silver bullet to combat piracy, say market watchers.

The Pirate Bay Must Be Blocked By UK ISPs, Court Rules (BBC)
The High Court ruled that UK internet service providers must block file-sharing site The Pirate Bay and prevent their users from accessing the site.

U.S. Names China, Dozen Other Countries On Intellectual Property Watch List (Chicago Tribune)
The U.S. Trade Representative’s office again put China and Russia on its annual list of countries with the worst records of preventing the theft of copyrighted material and other intellectual property, while dropping Malaysia and Spain.

ICANN To Notify Domain Applicants Of Data Breaches (Reuters)
ICANN will notify domain name applicants next week whether their applications for new domain names could have been viewed by competitors as a result of a software bug.

How Hollywood Convinced California’s Senate To Pass A Bill Increasing Piracy Damages (The Hollywood Reporter)
An obscure case last year involving two men convicted for intending to sell thousands of counterfeit CDs and DVDs challenged the value of damages from piracy. California law on calculating restitution is now on the verge of changing what pirates owe.

IP Lawyers Praise Targeting Of Counterfeit Imports (The National Law Journal)
An interim rule of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (authorized by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012) will allow the agency to share such information as product serial numbers, universal product codes, and stock keeping unit numbers with trademark owners so the rights owners can help the agency identify counterfeit goods.

Copyright Case In Oracle vs. Google Goes To Jury (Reuters)
Jurors began deliberating about whether Google violated Oracle’s copyright on parts of the Java programming language in a high stakes trial over smartphone technology in which Oracle is seeking roughly $1 billion from Google in copyright damages.

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