The International Trade Commission has instituted a section 337 patent-based investigation of certain liquid crystal display (LCD) modules, products containing same, and methods for using the same pursuant to a complaint.
The International Trade Commission has instituted a section 337 patent-based investigation of certain refrigerators and components thereof pursuant to a complaint.
Qualcomm lost a key court case in the United Kingdom in its long-running battle with Nokia over patents. It was the second loss for Qualcomm in a week, after the U.S. International Trade Commission last week rejected Qualcomm’s petition for review of a December decision that Nokia doesn’t infringe three alleged Qualcomm patents. Both companies are scheduled to square off this summer in Delaware as a court there holds what’s expected to be a hearing consolidating various lawsuits and countersuits.
The RIAA is trying to avoid a snowball effect after a federal judge in Connecticut ruled the trade group’s infringement claims too vague and expressed skepticism that its “making available” theory of infringement is sound (WID Feb 26 p7). Defense lawyers in New York, a hotbed of P2P cases, quickly notified courts there of the Connecticut ruling. The RIAA has responded to at least one, in Brooklyn federal court, by citing a recent favorable ruling from Michigan. Meanwhile, the RIAA has been told by two judges recently that it must file separate complaints against defendants who had been sued together.
The RIAA has run into another judge who not only rejects its theory that “making available” files in a shared folder counts as infringement, but who frowns on a crucial and inexpensive way the group has won favorable rulings in P2P cases. A few judges nationwide have kept the RIAA from scoring speedy victories, notably in San Diego, where the trade group’s standard complaint was rejected as impermissibly vague (WID Sept 11 p2). Defendants elsewhere have cited the San Diego ruling to resist RIAA. Now in the U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn., Judge Janet Arterton has told the major record labels that she can’t grant their motion for a default judgment in Atlantic v. Brennan. Nothing in the “current sparse record” indicates why Christopher Brennan didn’t respond to being served by the RIAA, a silence that the trade group reads as not contesting its charges. But Brennan’s lapse is “negligent at most,” Arterton said. She cited another court’s opinion that even “gross negligence” weighs only “somewhat” against defendants. Arterton called “problematic” the RIAA’s contention, supported by the Justice Department, that making files available for distribution is infringement. She cited a 7- volume treatise on copyright by Google Senior Copyright Counsel William Patry in which he wrote that “actual distribution” is required to infringe. This seems to be the first instance of a judge citing Patry, a vocal critic of the RIAA and former adviser to the Register of Copyrights, in rejecting an RIAA argument. Arterton also cited a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against adult publisher Perfect 10 finding that “actual dissemination” is required for distribution. That court said Google didn’t “distribute” full-sized infringed images because it didn’t host them (WID May 17 p1). Arterton cited “colorable defenses” asserted in other cases that weigh in favor of Brennan, including a challenge to the constitutionality of statutory damages under the Copyright Act in UMG v. Lindor (WID Nov 28 p6) and a copyright-misuse counterclaim alleging antitrust behavior in Lava v. Amurao in Manhattan federal court. There’s no reason to think the RIAA will lose evidence, suffer “increased difficulties of recovery” or be harmed by those exploiting “greater opportunity for fraud and collusion” if its motion is denied, Arterton said. She echoed San Diego colleague Rudi Brewster, who said the Supreme Court’s Twombly ruling that complaints demand more than “labels and conclusions” was a strike against RIAA’s “boilerplate listing” of alleged infringements. The RIAA’s claims must be “more than mere conjecture,” Arterton said.
YouTube removed a video showing RIAA officials discussing use of music-piracy investigations to pursue more serious crime. The posting violated YouTube’s terms of use, a notice on the video’s Web address said -- an unusual rationale, since copyrighted clips that are removed usually are replaced by a note that the copyright owner requested a takedown. A YouTube spokeswoman told us the site’s action went beyond pulling the video. “The user’s account was suspended due to multiple copyright violations; thus, the video was removed when the account was suspended.” The video actually wasn’t among the user’s violations -- just collateral damage, she said. The hour-long “training video,” as it has been dubbed, has surfaced on torrent sites, ridiculed by RIAA critics for trying to link music piracy with homicide, drug- dealing and terrorism. A two-minute streaming clip remained posted Friday afternoon at gadget blog Gizmodo. The video was co-produced with the National District Attorneys Association for use in its “In Trial” series for members. In the video, the NDAA’s Jim Dedman interviews Deborah Robinson, counsel for the RIAA antipiracy division’s central region and former Philadelphia prosecutor, and Frank Walters, a former Maryland state trooper who heads RIAA investigations for the central region. Music piracy “might lead to you a drug investigation,” Robinson says. Purchase of pirate CDs by officers working undercover “might allow you to have probable cause to a drug house,” she declares. RIAA piracy probes have found links to “terrorist organizations,” she says: “There’s a number of [federal] cases we're working on right now.” Asked by Dedman if paroled criminals “might be gravitating” toward piracy, Walters says, “More often than not.” Such types are often “recidivists” who find piracy useful as an adjunct for other crimes, he adds. A way to sell drugs with outlaw CDs is to ask a prospect “With or without?” Walters says. RIAA raids conducted with police have found guns, narcotics and counterfeit money, along with pirate CDs, he says: “It really goes the gamut on what can be found during one of these investigations.” The RIAA filed no takedown request with YouTube, a spokeswoman for the trade group told us. David LaBahn, director of the NDAA’s American Prosecutors Research Institute, told us the video seen online must have been ripped from a DVD the group sent prosecutors in December. The NDAA wasn’t aware of the postings until we asked, he said. The copyrighted material is meant only for prosecutors, police, and investigators. Were defense lawyers to see it, “How good is that training going to be?” he added. The NDAA is “very liberal in our copyright” but doesn’t authorize public showing of the videos. The NDAA won’t flinch at filing takedown requests, LaBahn said: “If we can find it, we will stop it.” In regard to the video’s inclusion of an RIAA official describing how the group gets its investigators qualified as expert witnesses, LaBahn said that to a court, an expert is “anyone who knows more than an average individual, so certainly when you talk about piracy… I don’t think it’s unusual at all that an association investigator would be able to qualify,” any more than a banker would be in a wire fraud case. Critics like Johan Pouwelse, assistant professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, mock what they term the RIAA’s limited grasp of P2P network technology (WID Feb 22 p5).
Another fight between the RIAA and a university over unnamed P2P defendants came to a head Tuesday, but may be resolved shortly. The U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City ordered Oklahoma State University to show cause why it shouldn’t be held in contempt of court for failing to respond to RIAA subpoenas to identify student defendants in Arista v. Does 1-11. But the case doesn’t appear to herald the involvement of a second state attorney general in a P2P case. The attorney general of Oregon intervened on behalf of the University of Oregon against RIAA subpoenas to identify alleged infringers, citing student privacy law (WID Dec 3 p5).
The Hong Kong Trade Development Council has issued a press release announcing that the China Textile Industry Association has predicted that textile and apparel exports from China will continue double-digit growth in 2008, but at a slightly lower growth rate than 2007. (HKTDC, dated 01/29/08, available at http://garments.tdctrade.com/content.aspx?data=garments_content_en&contentid=1006445&w_sid=194&w_pid=679&w_nid=10353&w_cid=1006445&w_idt=1900-01-01&w_oid=343&w_jid=)
Glu Mobile increased its market share in the U.S. and overseas during 2007 even as “the market has gotten increasingly tough for many of our competitors,” CEO Greg Ballard told analysts in a conference call late Monday. He was discussing the mobile game maker’s improved results for its Q4 and fiscal year ended Dec. 31. Demand was strong for several of its catalog and new games, it said.
Alone among developed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Canada hasn’t taken “meaningful steps” to comply with the WIPO Internet treaties, the International Intellectual Property Alliance said Monday. It appears to be the first time the group, which includes U.S. copyright heavy-hitters such as the RIAA, has called for a primarily English-speaking country to go on the U.S. Trade Representative’s Priority Watch List. It’s reserved for the worst IP offenders. IIPA identified problems with copyright protection, enforcement and market access in 51 countries. It asked the agency to add 43 of those to a watch list, in comments filed with the agency’s so-called Special 301 review.