Other Barks & Bites for Friday, April 10: DISH Wins Copyright Appeal Over Arabic TV Retransmissions; Fifth Circuit Awards Google Transfer on Mandamus; and Third Circuit Says Online Publication of Copyrighted Building Codes is Transformative

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This week in Other Barks and Bites: the EU’s GPAI Signatory Taskforce convenes a second meeting to focus on copyright issues like mitigating infringing AI outputs; Meta and CoreWeave extend their AI cloud partnership through 2032 with a new deal worth $21 billion; the Third Circuit rules that the online publication of ASTM building codes incorporated by reference into municipal codes is a transformative fair use; the Eleventh Circuit dismisses an appeal following a copyright judgment in DISH Network’s favor over the unauthorized retransmission of Arabic-language television content; South Korea’s ETRI reached its highest recorded annual revenues for licensing SEPs during 2025; the Fifth Circuit awards a venue transfer in an antitrust case against Google over a dissent from Circuit Judge Higginson; Yuga Labs settles a copyright infringement case with the defendant reportedly agreeing to stop satirical uses of the Bored Ape Yacht Club series; and Judge Ona Wang orders a second deposition of an OpenAI witness who could not testify as to basic details of the company’s “Project Giraffe” copyright infringement mitigation effort.

Bites

CAFC Affirms PTAB’s Invalidation of Voice Input Patent Claims – On Friday, April 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision finding several claims of Universal Electronics, Inc.’s U.S. Patent No. 10,930,276 unpatentable as obvious in an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding brought by Roku, Inc.

Eleventh Circuit Affirms Copyright Ruling for DISH Over Arabic TV Retransmissions – On Thursday, April 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a ruling in DISH Network L.L.C. v. Fraifer affirming summary judgment and bench trial rulings entered by the Middle District of Florida over copyright infringement claims filed by DISH Network against Gaby Fraifer and corporate entities owned by Fraifer that allegedly captured and rebroadcast copyrighted content airing on a series of Arabic-language television channels. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s direct copyright infringement finding based on the defendants’ use of encoders to push transmissions to content delivery networks, and found no abuse of discretion in the district court’s decisions to admit expert testimony related to infringement and also admit evidence of PayPal payments and WHOIS domain ownership records.

Second Meeting of EU’s GPAI Signatory Taskforce Focuses on Copyright Chapter – On Wednesday, April 8, the European Commission announced that the EU AI Office had convened the second meeting of the Signature Taskforce under the General-Purpose Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) Code of Practice, bringing together representatives from signatories to the GPAI Code of Practice including major tech firms like Amazon, Google and Microsoft, to share implementation experiences and best practices. This second meeting focused on the Copyright Chapter of the GPAI Code of Practice, including provisions for mitigating copyright-infringing outputs as well as the designation and functioning of contact points for complaints, with representatives discussing the use of attribution algorithms and lifecycle approaches that mitigate infringement issues at the input level.

CAFC Finds No Confusion Between “X” and “X Dot” Mark Without Sound – On Wednesday, April 8, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Fuente Marketing Ltd. v. Vaporous Technologies, LLC affirming the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s (TTAB) dismissal of Fuente Marketing’s opposition to a trademark application filed by Vaporous Technologies to register an “X Dot” trademark. Assessing the relevant DuPont factors, the Federal Circuit found that the TTAB’s reliance on a description of Vaporous’ mark as a stick figure that doesn’t convey sound in a stipulation jointly agreed to by the parties and challenged by Fuente on appeal to be harmless, finding that the Board reached the same dissimilarity conclusion without reference to the statement even if the stipulation was dispositive of the likelihood of confusion balancing test.

Fifth Circuit Awards Transfer to Google on Mandamus Relief Citing Improper Court Congestion Analysis – On Tuesday, April 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit entered a ruling in In re Google, L.L.C. reversing the Eastern District of Texas’ refusal to transfer an antitrust suit filed by Branch Metrics alleging Google violated U.S. antitrust law through anticompetitive behavior in general online search and search advertising markets, the appellate court finding that the Eastern Texas district court improperly analyzed the In re Volkswagen factors for determining whether good cause exists for a transfer, particularly in finding dispositive court congestion factors that the Fifth Circuit majority noted were speculative. Writing in dissent was Circuit Judge Stephen Higginson, who noted Volkswagen’s instructions against replacing district court discretion and that it is that movant’s burden to show good cause that gains in convenience following transfer will be significant, and that evidence makes it plainly obvious that such gains will actually materialize in the transferee venue.

Third Circuit Affirms Transformative Fair Use Finding for Building Codes Published Online – On Tuesday, April 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued an opinion in American Society for Testing & Materials v. UpCodes, Inc. affirming the Eastern District of Pennsylvania’s denial of preliminary injunction after agreeing with the district court that UpCodes was likely to succeed on the merits of its fair use defense to ASTM’s copyright claims. In finding UpCodes’ online publication of ASTM’s building codes to be transformative, the Third Circuit noted that UpCodes only publishes the version of ASTM’s codes that are incorporated by reference into the municipal codes of American cities, not the most recent version, and that UpCodes’ purpose in making the law publicly available outweighed commercial benefits from subscribing users who pay for their subscription primarily to take advantage of UpCodes’ proprietary tools and technology.

Premier League Joins Voices of AI Opposition to Proposed UK Copyright Reforms – On Monday, April 6, British newspaper The Times reported that top officials from the Premier League, the top league of British football, had submitted comments to the UK government’s consultation on copyright reforms for artificial intelligence (AI), questioning whether UK officials properly took into account the impact of such reforms on revenues for the Premier League and sports industry more generally. The Times reports that this marks the first time that a major sports league has joined creative communities in opposing the UK’s consultation, which had preferred a wide exception to copyright infringement for AI companies using copyrighted content in training and developing their AI models.

Barks

USITC Institutes Section 337 Investigation Into Screen Protectors Based on Belkin Complaint – On Thursday, April 9, the U.S. International Trade Commission announced that it had voted to institute a Section 337 proceeding into certain screen protectors and application systems imported for sale into the United States by Superior Communications of Irwindale, CA, based on a complaint for patent infringement filed by Belkin International of El Segundo, CA.

South Korea’s ETRI Records Highest Annual SEP Licensing Revenues During 2025 – On Wednesday, April 8, South Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced that, during 2025, its portfolio of standard essential patents (SEPs) earned a total of 50.2 billion won ($33.9 million USD) in licensing revenue, the highest annual total of licensing revenues for SEPs earned by ETRI contributing to a three-year revenue total of 131.3 billion won ($88.9 million USD).

Judge Wang Orders Second Deposition for OpenAI Witness Failing to Answer “Simplest Questions” – On Tuesday, April 7, U.S. District Judge Ona Wang of the Southern District of New York issued an opinion ordering a second deposition to be taken of John Vincent “Vinnie” Monaco, OpenAI’s designated witness on its “Project Giraffe” copyright infringement mitigation program, after finding that Monaco was so unprepared for his deposition that “when asked even the simplest questions relevant to Plaintiffs’ output claims, Mr. Monaco failed to answer or provided incomplete or evasive answers,” including his inability to name another OpenAI employee working on Project Giraffe.

Satirical Bored Ape Yacht Club Works to Cease Following Yuga Labs Settlement – On Tuesday, April 7, a notice of settlement entered into the Central District of California indicated that copyright infringement claims between Yuga Labs, creator of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and Ryder Ripps, the creator of several satirical works based on Yuga Labs’ NFT series, with news reports indicating that the undisclosed settlement terms will prevent Ripps from making further use of Yuga Labs’ imagery.

“Confessions of a Showgirl” Performer Files Preliminary Injunction Against Taylor Swift – On Tuesday, April 7, Las Vegas performer Maren Flagg, creator of the “Confessions of a Showgirl” podcast, filed a motion for preliminary injunction against Taylor Swift asking the Central District of California from enjoining Swift’s sales of any merchandise branded under the name of Swift’s studio album “The Life of a Showgirl” over a likelihood of consumer confusion.

Judge Kimball Invalidates Financial Account Security Patent Claims Under Alice/Mayo – On Wednesday, April 1, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball of the District of Utah entered a memorandum decision and order invalidating patent claims to systems for secure third-party access of financial accounts owned by Secure Authentication Technologies, holding that the patent claims were directed to a patent-ineligible abstract idea without any claimed elements containing an inventive concept amounting to significantly more than the abstract idea of managing authorization and access between parties.

This Week on Wall Street

Meta Inks $21B Deal With CoreWeave to Enhance Cloud Distribution of AI – On Thursday, April 9, social media giant Meta Platforms and cloud AI developer CoreWeave announced that the two companies had expanded their long-term agreement under which CoreWeave provides AI cloud capacity for Meta through 2032, the new agreement increasing Meta’s costs to $21 billion and including initial deployments of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin AI computing platform.

Quarterly Earnings – The following firms identified among the IPO’s Top 300 Patent Recipients for 2024 are announcing quarterly earnings next week (2023 rank in parentheses):

• Monday: Nanya Technology Corp. (175th); Nidec Corp. (171st)
• Tuesday: JPMorgan Chase & Co. (t-183rd); Johnson & Johnson (21st); Wells Fargo & Co. (81st)
• Wednesday: ASML Holding N.V. (t-194th); Bank of America Corp. (58th)
• Thursday: Abbott Laboratories (119th); Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (3rd)
• Friday: Telafonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (22nd)

Decision PDF