U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim in San Francisco scheduled a June 6 case management Zoom conference Friday on a complaint by Finnish inventor Lauri Valjakka that the Netflix Open Connect program infringes his July 2013 U.S. patent (8,495,167) on data communications networks. Kim was reassigned the case after U.S. Magistrate Judge in San Jose Virginia DeMarchi recused herself a day after it was transferred from U.S. District Court in Waco, Texas, where it was filed Sept. 13. Netflix lawyers haven’t responded to the merits of Valjakka’s arguments, but asked the Waco court in an improper-venue motion in December to move the case to Northern California. It was transferred there March 9 after Valjakka's lawyers didn't oppose the motion. Netflix describes its Open Connect program as providing opportunities for internet service provider partners to improve their customers' Netflix user experiences “by localizing Netflix traffic and minimizing the delivery of traffic that is served over a transit provider.”

Roku went to court Wednesday to thwart “online counterfeiters” that allegedly trade upon its “reputation and goodwill” by selling products that infringe Roku’s trademarks. The defendants are dozens of “foreign entities” based mainly in China that are improperly marketing unauthorized and illegal products “either by reference to or embodying a mark that is identical or substantially identical” to Roku logos, causing “further confusion and deception in the marketplace,” said its complaint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The alleged culprits are identified in documents that Roku seeks to file under seal. “Defendants attempt to avoid liability by going to great lengths to conceal both their identities and the full scope and interworking of their illegal counterfeiting operation,” said the complaint. Roku “has been and continues to be irreparably damaged through consumer confusion, dilution, and tarnishment of its valuable trademarks and goodwill and, therefore, seeks injunctive and monetary relief,” it said. It also seeks an order compelling Amazon and any other enabling “online marketplace account provider” to stop “providing services for any accounts” through which the defendants engage in the sale of counterfeit products, it said. Amazon didn’t comment Thursday.

Comments are due April 13 on a proposed partial settlement of details for distribution of satellite TV retransmission royalties for the 2015-2017 royalty years and partial distribution by the Copyright Royalty Board of those royalties, said the Federal Register Monday.

Various Primewire websites now direct to a new site that removed links to pirated content, but that doesn't change the need for permanent injunctive relief against the video pirating operation, Netflix and various studios told the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles Monday in docket 2:21-cv-09317. The plaintiffs were awarded a preliminary injunction in January (see 2201100047). Netflix and the others asked the court to approve the requested permanent injunction, which was amended to include the new website and domain.

It's "self-interested speculation" that computer code used by music label plaintiffs and not disclosed in discovery wouldn't have affected a jury finding Cox Communications liable for piracy by broadband subscribers, Cox told the U.S. District Court in Alexandria in a reply Thursday (docket 1:18-cv-950). It said the music label plaintiffs' actions "convey their fear that this information would have fatally undermined their case; otherwise, they would not have gone to such lengths to conceal it." The plaintiffs oppose Cox efforts to seek relief from the $1 billion verdict against it (see 2202180027).

Lawyers on opposing sides of the July 2014 Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) copyright case presided over by then-U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in D.C. were effusive in their praise of Jackson's qualifications as President Joe Biden's nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (see Ref:2202280001]). Jackson "was presented with a case applying an arcane, little-used statute involving 1990s digital audio recording technology to modern in-vehicle infotainment systems,” emailed copyright attorney Seth Greenstein of Constantine Cannon. Yet she “mastered the intricacies of both the statute and the technology" in rendering a decision, he said Monday. Jackson's decisions in the case "were principled and clear, and unsurprisingly were affirmed unanimously by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals," said Greenstein. "I have every confidence she has the acumen and policy proficiency to succeed her former boss, Justice Breyer, as the Court’s thought leader on copyright, technology, and intellectual property.” Though Rick Dagen of Axinn Veltrop was lead AHRA attorney in a losing cause for the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies, he thinks Jackson will be an "incredible" Supreme Court justice, he emailed Tuesday.

The creative community is losing a “lion” with the retirement of Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin said Monday, thanking Deutch for his work on film, TV and the streaming industry.

Cox Communications and the music labels suing it are clashing over a piece of computer code not made available to Cox in discovery. The plaintiff labels said Thursday (docket 1:18-cv-00950) in U.S. District Court in Alexandria that code "is of no consequence, since its production would not have changed the jury’s finding of Cox’s overwhelming liability for the massive infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works." MarkMonitor uses the code to store data from Audible Magic's identification of the contents of suspected infringing files, the labels said. They said Cox's subpoena of MarkMonitor never asked for the code and has never argued its absence limited any expert analysis. Cox said the labels' direct infringement case hinged on the supposed accuracy of the MarkMonitor system and its ability to use Audible Magic tech to guarantee that only legitimate infringement allegations were made last month, in its motion for relief from the $1 billion verdict against it. The discovery of the code "demonstrates the existence of newly discovered evidence, which seems likely to warrant relief."

Six companies “consistently competed” in patenting activity involving four technologies “central to 5G,” but of the six -- Ericsson, Huawei, LG, Nokia, Qualcomm and Samsung -- “no single firm dominates 5G innovation at present,” reported the Patent and Trademark Office Tuesday. “The results suggest that there remains ongoing competition among these six 5G companies in patenting activity,” said PTO. “Given the complexity of the results, caution is recommended when reviewing media claims of 5G dominance.” The findings “call into question claims that any single firm or country is ‘winning’ the 5G technology race,” said the agency.

Cable operators have instituted the transparency requirements mandated in the Television Viewer Protection Act "in the way that best suits their customers and existing sales and billing systems," NCTA said Friday in FCC docket 21-501. Comments on TVPA implementation by MVPDs were due Thursday (see 2112200057). NCTA said some cablers "go beyond the [truth-in-billing] requirements" in providing similar information for all their services. It said TVPA implementation in some cases required development, lab testing, field testing, and rollout of new billing and other software that could pull required disclosure data from various sources. ACA Connects said TVPA's retransmission consent “buying group” provisions "have largely served their limited purpose" because small MVPDs were able to facilitate deals in the past year between the National Cable Television Cooperative and large broadcasters. ACA said the retrans market "remains broken" and cited FCC data showing small MVPDs pay substantially more per subscriber than large operators, with that disparity widening. It said the buying group terms meant smaller transaction costs for broadcasters and MVPDs and likely meant lower prices for very small cable systems, but that didn't and couldn't narrow the gap between what big and small MVPDs pay.