Nearly 150 U.S. universities wrote Congress expressing concern over patent reform legislation. They said a large portion of the legislation goes “well beyond what is needed to address the bad actions of a small number of patent holders, and would instead make it more difficult and expensive for patent holders to defend their rights in good faith.” Mandatory fee-shifting and involuntary joinder are the most concerning because they would “make the legitimate defense of patent rights excessively risky and thus weaken the university technology transfer process,” the letter said. The patent system needs to provide strong protection for inventions to enable universities to license them to private sector enterprises, it said. Congress should take these concerns into consideration when assessing changes to the patent laws, it said. “It is imperative that any legislation avoid sweeping changes that would weaken our overall patent system and hinder the flow of groundbreaking advances from university research to the private sector, which catalyzes economic growth, creates jobs, and improves the lives of all Americans.” The letter was sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa; ranking member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.; and ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich. Among the signers were Boston University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation released a white paper Monday outlining its vision to fix the U.S. patent system, said an EFF blog post. The 37-page white paper calls for six legislative “reforms,” including “ensuring there are inexpensive and efficient tools for challenging the validity of issued patents” and “passing a comprehensive patent reform bill, such as the Innovation Act” (HR-9) (see 1502120043). “The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is issuing far too many weak and overbroad patents, particularly on software," EFF staff attorney Vera Ranieri said in the blog post. "Instead of promoting innovation, these patents become hidden landmines for companies that bring new products to market."

The Society of European Stage Authors and Composers agreed with the U.S. Copyright Office’s recent music licensing study proposal that “sound recordings and musical works should be valued on a more consistent basis,” CEO John Josephson said in a news release Wednesday. The CO’s study, released Feb. 5, backed full federal protection of pre-1972 sound recordings and terrestrial broadcasters paying public performance royalties (see 1502050055). “We agree with the Copyright Office’s recognition of the need to assure fair compensation to creators, the necessity for the licensing process to be more efficient and the demand for market participants to have access to authoritative data to identify and license sound recordings and musical works,” Josephson said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation asked a U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, to invalidate what the digital rights group calls a "junk patent," said an EFF news release. It said EFF partnered with Durie Tangri to defend Bytephoto.com from what EFF described as an “outrageous patent suit from a company that claims to hold the rights to online competitions on social networks where users vote for the winner.” Bytephoto.com has hosted user-submitted photos and competitions for best photo since 2003, EFF said. In 2007, Garfum.com applied for a patent on the “method of sharing multi-media content among users in a global computer network,” and filed an infringement lawsuit against Bytephoto.com in September 2014. EFF argued that “this kind of abstract idea using generic computer technology cannot be patented” and asked that the patent be declared invalid, in a motion to dismiss, the release said. "It's part of our job to identify stupid patents and to try to get rid of them, and this is one of the silliest I have ever seen," said EFF Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer. "Our client has been running 'vote-for-your-favorite-photo' polls for years, just for fun and the love of photography,” said Nazer, who's also EFF's Mark Cuban chair to eliminate stupid patents. “The idea that you could patent this abstract idea -- and then demand a settlement to go away -- goes against both patent law and common sense," he said. "Patents like this improperly interfere with the ability of people to use the Internet to do things they've been doing in the analog world for generations,” said EFF staff attorney Vera Ranieri. This patent is “interfering with the age-old tradition of like-minded enthusiasts getting together to celebrate their hobbies," Ranieri said: "Demanding a payout for infringement on an obviously bad patent like this one isn't just unfair,” it also is “a chilling effect against those who would want to use the Internet to expand their community." Garfum.com didn't comment.

The U.S. and Japan joined the Hague system for the global registration of industrial designs, adding "two of the world’s biggest economies" to a registry “that supports creators worldwide,” the World Intellectual Property Organization said in an announcement Friday. According to statistics from WIPO, which runs the registry, 8.2 percent of all design applications worldwide in 2013 were filed by applicants from the U.S., and 4.7 percent by applicants in Japan, the agency said. WIPO hopes other countries will consider joining the Hague system now that the U.S. and Japan have, it said. WIPO touts the 64-country-strong Hague system as offering a cost-effective means of registering industrial designs in a large number of countries, “providing design owners broad geographical protection of their designs with a minimum of formality and expense.” A Hague registration “produces the same effect of a grant of protection in each of the designated contracting parties as if the design had been registered directly with each national office, unless protection is refused by the national office,” WIPO said.

Language in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement “poses massive threats to users in a dizzying number of ways,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation Global Policy Analyst Maira Sutton in a blog post Thursday. All nations that sign the TPP will have to “accept the United States’ excessive copyright terms,” she said, as the U.S. exports “bad rules to other nations.” The broad definition of what constitutes a criminal violation of copyright could result in people being convicted of a crime for even noncommercial activities, Sutton said. “Fans who distribute subtitles to foreign movies or anime, or archivists and librarians who preserve and upload old books, videos, games, or music, could go to jail or face huge fines for their work,” she said. “Someone who makes a remix film and puts it online could be under threat.” The TPP also contains digital rights management “anti-circumvention provisions that will make it a crime to tinker with, hack, re-sell, preserve, and otherwise control any number of digital files and devices that you own,” according to the latest leak of the TPP in May 2014, Sutton said. The TPP encourages “ISPs to monitor and police their users likely leading to more censorship measures such as the blockage and filtering of content online in the name of copyright enforcement,” Sutton said. “TPP negotiators have already agreed to more vague provisions that would oblige countries to enact prison sentences and monetary fines that are ‘sufficiently high’ to deter people from infringing again.” Another concern is that law enforcement would be encouraged to seize laptops, servers or domain names. “These excessive criminal copyright rules are what we get when Big Content has access to powerful, secretive rule-making institutions,” which is “yet another reason why we need to stop the TPP,” Sutton said.

Two separate Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC) lawsuits alleging several automakers violated the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) were consolidated into one in an order signed Monday by U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Ford and General Motors and their respective suppliers Clarion and Denso violated the AHRA because they shipped vehicles with CD-copying hard drives without building the Serial Copy Management System into the devices or paying the Copyright Office the required royalties on the hardware's wholesale price, AARC alleged in a July lawsuit (see 1410140084). AARC filed a second complaint in November repeating many of the same allegations against Chrysler and its supplier Mitsubishi. In consolidating the two cases, Brown did so “without prejudice to any future motion to bifurcate proceedings for the purpose of trial,” her order said. Lawyers for Chrysler and Mitsubishi argued the two cases involve "common issues of fact and common questions of law." Brown asked all sides to show cause why the cases shouldn't be combined, and no one objected (see 1501280047).

Major advertising associations launched the Brand Integrity Program Against Piracy to help keep ads off sites that cater to piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods, a Trustworthy Accountability Group news release said Tuesday. TAG is an initiative backed by the Association of National Advertisers, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The co-chairmen of the International Creativity and Theft-Prevention Caucus applauded the announcement Tuesday. “With the adoption of validated tools to keep ads off pirate sites, it's incumbent upon advertisers and others in the supply chain to follow through and make use of these new technologies to cut off funding to sites that use online theft as their business model,” said Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in a caucus joint release. The new program is also backed by the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition, MPAA, RIAA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups, the TAG release said.

The Internet Commerce Coalition filed a brief on behalf of Google's case against Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood (see 1502020047). Google filed a lawsuit in December against Hood, alleging he tried to censor the Internet in an administrative subpoena he filed against the company in October (see 1412190045). Online free speech proponents have argued that MPAA’s alleged involvement in Hood’s subpoena proves the entertainment industry is pursuing alternative strategies to the failed Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act. Hood’s supporters have asked why a state attorney general shouldn’t be allowed to investigate a company for possible consumer violations and condemned Google’s use of stolen documents in the Sony Entertainment Pictures data breach in the case (see 1412170050). ICC argued in its filing that Hood stepped outside his legal jurisdiction. “Congress has determined that all legal claims involving the right to copy, disseminate, sell, and download works within the subject matter of copyright should be determined solely through a copyright infringement action in federal court,” it said. “State consumer protection laws, such as the Mississippi Consumer Protection Act ('MCPA') which provides the authority for the Attorney General’s Subpoena, are completely preempted in such circumstances.”

Patent reform is necessary, especially for software, because “juries and courts often fail to distinguish between patented code" and the end function of a software product, Heartland Institute Policy Adviser Steven Titch wrote in a Feb. 5 policy brief that was released Tuesday. “Frivolous patent litigation costs U.S. businesses $29 billion a year in direct costs and $80 billion in indirect costs,” Titch told us. Titch’s comments echoed President Barack Obama's 2014 State of the Union address, in which he encouraged Congress to “pass a patent reform bill that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly and needless litigation.” Congress should confirm Michelle Lee as director of the Patent Office, and the FCC should “avoid heavy reliance on patented technology,” the paper said. In the past several years, there has been an increase in “patent stockpiling” or “aggregation” as an increasing number of companies and individuals file frivolous or “mostly” baseless lawsuits, it said. Especially in today’s high-tech environment, where one personal computer, smartphone, gaming console or TV can “incorporate dozens or even hundreds of patented products or processes,” patent reform needs to occur, the paper said. These patent assertion entities (PAEs) or “patent trolls” such as Soverain Software, exploit weaknesses in the patent system, such as when Soverain claimed that any website shopping cart function was an infringement of its patent, it said. Soverain had a $40 million settlement with Amazon and a multimillion-dollar settlement with both Avon and Victoria’s Secret, the paper said. Due to the profitability of patent trolling, companies such as Nokia are now using patent litigation to earn revenue, which Titch said has made companies more reluctant when it comes to innovation. U.S. patent laws aren't broken, but “need to be reformed to better recognize the way innovation happens in the twenty-first century,” the paper said. "Enterprises should be using the marketplace, not the courtroom, to evaluate investment and return opportunities,” Titch said. “Patent reform can help by changing the cost-benefit ratios of litigation so frivolous patents are deterred but plaintiffs with legitimate cases are still able to bring a case." Soverain had no immediate comment.