The White House announced a series of executive actions and legislative recommendations Tuesday that a senior administration official said were “specifically designed” to deal with abusive patent litigation. The White House’s actions follow the introduction of four bills in Congress -- including three in the last month -- that would address patent litigation abuse caused by patent assertion entities (PAEs). The discussion draft of a fifth bill, crafted by the House Judiciary Committee, is circulating through industry and legislative circles (CED June 3 p8).
White House to Review CBP Patent Exclusion Order Enforcement, Urges New Standard for ITC Injunctions
A White House taskforce on patent issues released a set of recommendations and executive actions, urging legislative action on the standard for International Trade Commission injunctions and committing to an interagency review on CBP’s evaluation of the scope of ITC exclusion orders. The June 4 statement contained five executive actions and seven legislative recommendations “designed to protect innovators from frivolous litigation and ensure the highest-quality patents in our system,” the statement said. The National Economic Council and Council of Economic Advisers released a report on patent challenges (here) in conjunction with the White House announcement.
The 30-day period to challenge scope rulings in court begins on the date the scope ruling is mailed by the Commerce Department, and is not triggered by email communications, said the Court of International Trade as it dismissed Medline Industries’ challenge. Medline had filed suit after Commerce emailed its lawyer a copy of the adverse scope ruling on wooden bedroom furniture from China. But the snail mail scope ruling from a month later actually triggered the period for filing suit, even though Commerce had allegedly misrepresented that no physically mailed scope ruling would be forthcoming. The case will proceed regardless, as Medline filed a separate challenge following its second receipt of the scope ruling. The company expressed concern, however, at the cost of having to appeal this dismissal of its first suit to protect itself from a jurisdictional challenge.
Graphics Properties Holdings filed a petition for an International Trade Commission investigation May 17, alleging consumer electronics imported and sold by Panasonic, Toshiba, Vizio, AmTran, and ZTE are infringing its patents. According to the complaint, the products at issue are consumer electronics devices with display and processing capabilities, such as laptops, netbooks, PCs, television sets, HD camcorders, and Blue-ray and DVD players, that combine several pre-existing technologies into a single device. GPH is requesting cease and desist orders and limited exclusion orders against the products purportedly in violation of Section 337, as well as a bond requirement during the 60-day period during which the White House may veto any ITC orders.
Grooveshark employee Nikola Arabadjiev settled with major record labels in a 2011 copyright infringement case against the on-demand music service, according to documents obtained by P2P news site TorrentFreak (http://bit.ly/17Gfpe5). Arabadjiev does quality assurance for Grooveshark, according to the company’s site. The settlement is related to a copyright case brought against Grooveshark -- owned by Escape Media -- and its employees by Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Bros. Records after Grooveshark allegedly made available to users music owned by the labels without their permission (WID Dec 22/11 p1). Under the consent judgment, Arabadjiev is prohibited from “copying, uploading, reproducing, distributing, transmitting or publically [sic] performing any of the Copyrighted Works in violation of the United States Copyright Act, via the Grooveshark service or any other online streaming service, website, application, or peer-to-peer or file-trading system that operates without authority or license from the appropriate Plaintiff or any of its licensees.” In a statement, Grooveshark said it’s “pleased that the case between Universal Music and Escape Media has been narrowed and simplified by the removal of some individual defendants from the case upon their stipulation to simply obey the law -- something Escape Media does every day through its active licensing of millions of tracks and its strict compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."
The D.C. federal District Court dismissed PRP Trading’s attempt to gain release of several shipments of aluminum extrusions it contends were mistakenly seized for lack of country of origin markings. The Court of International Trade had transferred the case to the District Courts in October, after finding it had no jurisdiction because the shipments had been seized before PRP Trading filed suit (see 12100331). But according to the D.C. court, PRP Trading requested the case be transferred to the wrong district -- it should have brought suit in Puerto Rico -- and in any case the company didn’t complete all required actions at the administrative level before CBP.
The antidumping duty orders on ball bearings from Japan and the United Kingdom are set to be reinstated, after the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided May 16 to reverse several lower court rulings. The Court of International Trade remands had resulted in the International Trade Commission changing its affirmative injury determinations from its sunset reviews to negative ones. That led to revocation of the ball bearings orders for Japan and the U.K. in July 2011. But the appeals court said that, contrary to the lower court’s findings, the ITC injury findings were supported by record evidence, and should have stood.
The Court of International Trade denied Tenacious Holdings’ motion to dismiss a government penalty claim against it related to negligent misclassification of entries. Tenacious said the government should have brought its penalty action as part of the ongoing classification challenge related to the entries. But the court found that, given the idiosyncrasies of case filing procedures at CIT, requiring penalty actions to be filed as counterclaims in classification cases could have the perverse effect of allowing defendants in those penalty actions to run out the statute of limitations.
More resources are needed for federal agencies to fully implement the 2008 amendments to the Lacey Act, though agencies have already focused on educating importers about the new declaration requirements, crafting exclusions, and an creating online database for importers, representatives from Animal Plant and Health Inspection Services and U.S. Fish and Wildlife told a House Subcommittee May 16.
The U.S. patent system is not entirely broken, but reforms beyond the America Invents Act (AIA) are needed to fix issues the system continues to face, a group of current and former federal judges said Tuesday at an event sponsored by the Federalist Society and George Mason University School of Law’s Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property. The judges credited AIA, which Congress passed in 2011, with helping improve conditions at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO).