The world sees the U.S. as a leader in protecting and enforcing intellectual property rights, but as countries across the globe "seek to catch up," America "cannot afford to stand still," Michelle Lee, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director, said Monday in a speech at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event. The focus of Lee's speech was primarily on the need for the U.S. patent system to evolve and the changes she said are necessary for it to improve. Lee said she met with Chinese leaders in the field of intellectual property on a recent trip and was told China is seeking to transition its economy from relying on manufacturing the inventions of people from other countries to thriving off inventions of its own. To do so, China "recognizes the need for a patent system" more like that of the U.S., she said. Because of the increased threat of competition from other countries, Lee said, it's important that the U.S. strives to become "even better at incentivizing and promoting innovation and investment." Current problems with the U.S. system stem partly from the rise of the practice of monetizing a patent bought from another company "without contributing anything inventive or without making or providing any service," and in increased patent infringement claims made merely to coerce defense settlements without regard to the merits of a claim, she said. Such problems "are not just bad for small businesses and startups," they're bad for "inventors, consumers, jobs and the American economy," she said. And "worst of all," such problems "reduce the public's faith in our patent system," Lee said. Her idea is to change the system in a way that preserves balance between maintaining strong patent protections that are necessary for innovation, and ensuring a more efficient and streamlined way of handling disputes, she said. Achieving that balance is "a responsibility shared by all three branches of government," but in order to have timely changes "targeted and balanced legislation is needed," she said. Reforms should reduce the incentive to engage in abusive patent litigation tactics without undermining the strengths of "our world-class patent system," she said. "Reform is not a crisis of faith about our patent system," Lee said, but "a way of keeping faith with its goals of promoting innovation and technological progress."

An IEEE patent policy could stifle competition and encourage collusion, said Criterion Economics Chairman Gregory Sidak. The policy, which addresses how businesses that voluntarily comply with fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms may evaluate patent royalty rates, was established in February by IEEE in what it said will protect against patent holdup and royalty stacking. Businesses that are a part of standard setting-organizations agree to abide by FRAND practices when it comes to the licensing of their patented technology. IEEE's policy said it puts safeguards in place so companies with patents determined to be an industry standard for a certain technology can't raise the licensing price for other entities too high, or multiple companies with essential patents can't stack up royalty demands. "There is very little evidence" to support the theories, Sidak said. During a Hudson Institute event Wednesday, Sidak said he doesn't see any proof that products aren't being brought to market because royalty stacks are too high. He also said that in a court case, it is hard for people to provide data that stacking and holdups are happening. "When you actually litigate one of these cases," said Sidak, "there will be a lot of lip service paid to one of these theoretical principles, but when you actually have to compute a royalty, they're not feasible because the data typically isn't in existence." At IEEE's request, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division issued a business review letter analyzing antitrust implications. "Harm is unlikely to occur" to competition by "anticompetitively reducing royalties" and "diminishing incentives to innovate" as a result of the new policy, said the DOJ. Sidak said the division has never written a business review letter about issues related to standard essential patents (SEPs) and failed to address whether royalty stacking and patent holdup occur. After the IEEE submitted its request for a business review letter, Sidak wrote his own letter to the division, stating that, contrary to what the IEEE suggests, the amendments to its policy threaten competition and consumer welfare. Sidak wrote that he has consulted for companies concerning SEPs and has advised IEEE members; he said the remarks in his letter to the DOJ were only on his behalf. "Although these clients have urged me to write to you, they have also asked that I express strictly my own views," he wrote. DOJ and IEEE had no comment Thursday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the Copyright Royalty Board’s (CRB) 2013 ruling that the Independent Producers Group (IPG) didn’t have a claim on the 2000-2003 sports programming and program suppliers royalties awarded to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), MPAA and the U.S. Olympic Committee. The CRB had said IPG “had not established its authority to represent” either FIFA or the U.S. Olympic Committee, the court said Tuesday. IPG appealed the CRB ruling as “arbitrary and capricious.” The D.C. Circuit said it agreed with the CRB’s analysis, saying “no basis exists for overturning the Board’s reasoned decision to reject IPG’s sports programming claims on behalf of FIFA and the U.S. Olympic Committee.” The D.C. Circuit also rejected IPG’s complaints against the CRB’s decision to award royalties in the program suppliers category to MPAA on behalf of other claimants, saying no claimant objected to MPAA’s authority to act on its behalf. MPAA also “supplied agreements with the claimants’ agents, and the Board had no reason to doubt the authenticity of those agreements,” the D.C. Circuit said.

HDMI Licensing “wrongfully” demands $905,000-plus in back royalties and interest from Advanced Digital Broadcast, a Swiss-based supplier of HD set-top boxes, residential gateway devices and other products to pay-TV operators, ADB alleged in a breach of contract complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose. ADB seeks a declaratory ruling that it doesn’t owe the money. HDMI Licensing threatened to cancel ADB’s license agreement at the close of business Tuesday and alert customs authorities globally to seize ADB shipments as “unauthorized” goods, the complaint said. The complaint doesn’t seek a preliminary injunction, only a “declaration” that HDMI Licensing “is precluded” from notifying customs that ADB goods “are unauthorized and subject to seizure because they are not.” Neither side commented Wednesday. Under its November 2005 HDMI license agreement, ADB dutifully paid the 4 cents per unit royalty it owed for every licensed “end-user cable, component, connector, repeater, source or sink” it shipped between January 2010 and December 2012, the complaint said. An independent HDMI Licensing auditor found in late 2014 -- incorrectly, ADB alleged -- that ADB failed to “reasonably incorporate” the HDMI trademarks into the product documentation materials that accompanied those shipments, the complaint said. That failure gives HDMI Licensing the authority to charge an additional 10 cents per unit royalty, and it’s that differential royalty that ADB said it doesn’t owe. "Solely in an effort to resolve the dispute," ADB "changed the way it reasonably incorporates the HDMI alleged trademark into its related materials,” the complaint said. “ADB licensed products implement any and all changes in marking” that HDMI Licensing suggested, yet the licensor won't relent, it said.

Patent and Trademark Office Director Michelle Lee will keynote a Monday event at 1 p.m. on the state of U.S. patent law overhaul. The Center for Strategic and International Studies is hosting the event at its office at 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. After the keynote, Victoria Espinel, BSA/The Software Alliance CEO, and Michael Waring, University of Michigan executive director-federal relations, will discuss the topic.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office reversed a recent policy decision that would have “locked down data collected by California Department of Justice (CADOJ),” wrote Electronic Frontier Foundation Investigative Researcher Dave Maass in a blog post. “This is a small but important victory, since the attorney general currently writes [California Public Records Act] CPRA guidelines for the rest of the state.” In May, the CADOJ denied EFF’s request for “machine-readable, alternative versions of the California Electronic Interceptions Report,” a data set that details costs and effectiveness of wiretaps across the state, Maass said Friday. The PDF version online was difficult to break down and analyze, he said. A CADOJ lawyer said “under new security protocols, the office would provide only copies in a ‘locked PDF’ format in order to preserve the ‘integrity of the data,’” Maass said. He said the policy “was essentially slapping digital rights management on public records,” so the EFF was “happy to receive an email from the attorney general’s office” shortly after the foundation wrote a blog post in May detailing its concerns, saying there was an internal misunderstanding. “Although we've sought further explanations for a month now, CADOJ representatives have provided only vague answers,” Maass said. EFF continues to monitor state-level legislation that would create statewide rules for open data, including the creation of a formal chief data officer position that would write formal open data guidelines in consultation with the AG, Maass said.

The 9th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals issued a verdict in favor of Cox Communications Monday in a patent-infringement lawsuit brought by Cambrian Science Corp. In the original case, heard in U.S. District Court in the Central California, the court said Cox didn't infringe on U.S. Patent No. 6,775,312 which deals with components of a photonic integrated circuit used in fiber cables. Cambrian claimed Cox's Generations 1, 2 and 3 photonic integrated circuits violated the patent it currently holds. After the District Court judgment, Cambrian appealed the ruling only as it pertained to the Generation 2 circuit and the court's interpretation of the patent language. The dispute came down to the difference between an active waveguide coupler, which consists of material that can add gain to the optical signal, and a passive coupler, which is made of material that can't boost the signal. The 9th Circuit determined that Cox's Generation 2 device didn't satisfy the claim construction of an active coupler, and thus upheld the District Court's judgment of noninfringement. Cox declined to comment on the ruling and Cambrian couldn't be reached.

AMC Theatres will begin showing the Motion Picture Association of America’s “I Make Movies” videos at the movie theater chain’s more than 300 U.S. locations to promote legitimate content viewing, the association said Friday. MPAA CEO Chris Dodd has been encouraging theater owners to show the videos since their release earlier this year. “This latest effort will help inform those movie-goers that watching films in theaters and through legitimate online services is important for supporting the kind of creativity exhibited by the nearly 2 million American men and women that work in our industry,” Dodd said in a news release. Several independent theaters agreed to begin showing the MPAA videos, said the group.

Hyper-local and indoor positioning services firm sensewhere secured patents in China and the U.S., a company news release said Wednesday. The patent issued by the Patent and Trademark Office is for a method by which a singular device can "assist another device to obtain a position fix," sensewhere said. The patent issued by the Chinese government differs from the U.S. patent in that it covers a method to map wireless access points by using location references from a user device, the company said.

Several public interest groups said they were pleased with the bipartisan support for patent reform legislation moving in committees in both the U.S. House and Senate. During a panel Wednesday held by Public Knowledge, representatives from groups pushing for increased consumer protection from patent litigation said the support for litigation protection is across the board. "[There] couldn't be more support for this," said Chris Armstrong, director of Small Business Majority-partnership and government affairs. Armstrong also said his company's research showed most individuals polled support increased restrictions on patent trolls and patent litigation. Charles Duan, director of the Public Knowledge Patent Reform Project, said patent litigation and patent demand letters have had a significant impact on the small-business sector, especially in the area of investor confidence. Duan referred to research that he said showed 75 percent of venture capital firms would be less inclined to invest in a business that has been sent a patent demand letter or threatened by a patent assertion entity (PAE). Duan also said consumers of certain products, particularly from the tech and communications sector, also are being affected by patents trolls and PAEs. As the Senate Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship Act and the House Innovation Act -- which are both targeted primarily at reducing lawsuits and threats issued by PAEs and increasing consumer security -- work their way through their respective chambers, Duan, Armstrong and other public interest group representatives said open dialogue with those affected by the patent suits and advocacy should continue to help members of Congress find the best ways to resolve many of the issues allegedly caused by increased patent litigation.