Other Barks & Bites for Friday, July 24: FRONTIER Act Introduced in House; Google Hit With €890 Million Fine for DMA Violations; and PTAB Revises SOP 1 on APJ Panel Assignments

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This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Second Circuit affirms a ruling that copyright infringement claims against artist Jeff Koons were time-barred; the Federal Circuit reverses-in-part a Section 101 ruling invalidating patent claims to systems for distributing picture mail; the EU Commission fines Google €890 million for self-preferencing and steering violations under the Digital Markets Act; the Patent Trial and Appeal Board revises its standard operating procedure on panelling administrative patent judges; the Unified Patent Court upholds an injunction against Disney across 11 EU countries for infringing video encoding patents owned by InterDigital; Representatives Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Lori Trahan (D-MA) introduce the FRONTIER Act to establish a federal regulatory framework for large AI developers and models; the Third Circuit affirms a lower court’s finding that Ecolab did not have affirmative written communication required under a patent agreement to assert patent rights owned by Deb Group; and Sony files a second copyright infringement complaint against Udio alleging infringement of more than 30,000 recordings.

Barks

FRONTIER Act Introduced to Establish Federal Regulatory Framework for Advanced AI – On Thursday, July 23, a bipartisan coalition of U.S. Representatives led by Congressman Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Congresswoman Lori Trahan (D-MA) introduced the Frontier Risk Oversight, National Transparency, Independent Evaluation, and Reporting (FRONTIER) Act into the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill is designed to establish a federal regulatory framework for risk management governing the development and deployment of frontier artificial intelligence (AI) models, defining a frontier model as a foundation model trained using more than 10²⁶ operations and reserving the highest regulatory tiers for large or very large frontier developers, defined as companies with gross revenues over $50 million and $1 billion in AI-related development expenditures for large developers and gross revenues over $5 billion plus $10 billion in AI-related expenditures for very large developers.

CAFC Reverses Section 101 Ruling on Digital Picture Frame Patent Claim – On Thursday, July 23, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a ruling in Ceiva Opco, LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc. reversing-in-part a summary judgment ruling by the Central District of California finding all patent claims asserted by Ceiva Opco claiming methods and apparatuses for distributing picture mail to a frame device community invalid for being directed to unpatentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Federal Circuit ruled that Ceiva Opco’s sole digital picture frame claim asserted in the case was directed to a technical solution of an improved system for sharing digital images with the technological improvement of a digital picture frame with a physically separable user interface, while affirming the Section 101 invalidations of Ceiva Opco’s other patent claims directed to digital display device claims, which were drawn to the abstract idea of “automatically accessing a remote data repository to obtain updated content without the use of a computer and without any further user input.”

EU Commission Hits Google With €890 Million Under DMA for Self-Preferencing, Steering – On Wednesday, July 22, the European Commission issued fines totalling €890 million against Internet services giant Google for self-preferencing the company’s own services on search results available through its Google Search platform and for putting in place restrictions preventing consumers from being directed to alternative, cheaper purchase channels on the Google Play app store. The EU Commission ruled that these activities breached Google’s obligations under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) and further ordered that Google treat third-party services in a non-discriminatory manner on Google Search and allow app developers to conclude contracts with users outside of the Google Play store. 

Second Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Styrofoam Sculpture Infringement Claims Against Koons – On Tuesday, July 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a ruling in Hayden v. Koons affirming the Southern District of New York’s dismissal of copyright infringement claims filed by American artist Michael Hayden for infringement of a Styrofoam sculpture created for and sold to Italian adult film star Ilona Staller by artist Jeff Koons. The Second Circuit agreed that Hayden should have reasonably discovered the infringement, which began in 1989, before the alleged discovery date of 2019 after considering several factors including Hayden’s time in Italy where the infringement occurred, his direct connection to the art world and the notoriety of Koons’ exhibit, nixing Hayden’s attempts to establish a heightened discovery rule standard that would have required inquiry notice suggesting the probability of infringement.

Judge Martínez-Olguín Approves Class Action Settlement in Anthropic AI Case – On Monday, July 20, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the Northern District of California granted motions filed by authors Andrea Bartz, Kirk Wallace and others approving attorney’s fees and the landmark $1.5 billion class action settlement between the plaintiffs and Anthropic AI, which was alleged to have used thousands of copyrighted works in the training of its artificial intelligence platform. Judge Martínez-Olguín approved the settlement’s terms of $3,000 per infringed work, four times the minimum statutory damages for willful infringement, and a 25% cap on attorney’s fees while also nixing objections to the approval including the broad nature of the proposed class, which Judge Martínez-Olguín ruled was limited to the authors of works named on a works list submitted during the litigation.

Third Circuit Says Letter Electing Not to Enforce Did Not Transfer Patent Rights – On Monday, July 20, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a ruling in Ecolab Inc. v. SC Johnson Professional Group Ltd. affirming the District of Delaware’s dismissal of a contract suit filed by Ecolab seeking the right to assert hand sanitizer and skin-care product patents owned by SC Johnson’s predecessor Deb Group against infringers. The Third Circuit found that a 2022 letter from Deb Group declining to take commercially reasonable steps to enforce patent rights did not provide the affirmative written communication required by the patent agreement between the parties because Deb Group elected not to enforce patent rights because that letter both indicated that the patents would be invalid by September 2024 for obviousness-type double patenting and explicitly stated that this election did not trigger contractual provisions transferring patent enforcement rights to Ecolab.

Bites

UPC Upholds Disney Injunction for Infringing InterDigital HEVC Video Encoding Patents – On Thursday, July 23, global research and development company InterDigital announced that the Unified Patent Court (UPC) affirmed the validity of patent claims covering HEVC video encoding technology and upheld an injunction against media conglomerate Disney across 11 EU countries including France, Germany and Italy.

EPO to Transition to Fully Digital Patent Granting Process Next April – On Thursday, July 23, the European Patent Office (EPO) announced that the agency would complete its transition to a fully digital patent granting process by April 1 of next year, with the agency acknowledging that almost all patent applications, oppositions and third-party observations are already filed electronically at the EPO.

USPTO Unveils Updated Homepage Design on Official Website – On Thursday, July 23, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that it had published a modernized homepage design for its official website designed to provide users with faster access to agency resources, services and relevant information.

USPTO Issues NPRM on Requiring RPI Identification on Third-Party Reexam Requests – On Wednesday, July 22, the USPTO published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register seeking public comment on a proposed rule that would require third parties filing requests for ex parte reexaminations to identify all real parties in interest (RPIs) in a confidential statement for the agency to properly evaluate statutory estoppel provisions.

PTAB Revises Standard Operating Procedure on APJ Panel Assignments – On Monday, July 20, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued Revision 17 of Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 1 to streamline the process of assigning administrative patent judges (APJs) to America Invents Act (AIA) trials and explaining that statutory members of the PTAB may be paneled in the ordinary course of cases consistent with the remainder of SOP 1.

University of Tennessee Sues Anthropic Over Machine Learning Patent Claims – On Monday, July 20, the University of Tennessee Research Foundation filed a lawsuit in the District of Delaware accusing Anthropic AI of infringing upon patents claiming machine learning technology developed through the university’s pioneering research into neuroscience-inspired computing.

Sony Asserts More Than 30K Recordings in Second Complaint Against Udio – On Monday, July 20, Sony Music Entertainment filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against AI music company Udio asserting copyright infringement claims involving more than 30,000 recordings, including songs that Sony had previously tried to add to its first lawsuit against Udio.

This Week on Wall Street

Alphabet’s AI Cash Burn Raises Concerns Despite Record Cloud Computing Growth – On Thursday, July 23, Internet services giant Alphabet reported earnings for the second quarter showing that the company’s AI cloud computing unit grew 82% compared to revenues earned during the same quarter last year, but also showing the company lost $5.6 billion during the recent quarter, the first cash burn ever reported by the company, due to soaring spending on AI.

Quarterly Earnings – The following firms identified among the IPO’s Top 300 Patent Recipients for 2025 are announcing quarterly earnings next week (2025 rank in parentheses):

• Monday: Rambus Inc. (t-286th); Whirlpool Corp. (t-217th)
• Tuesday: The Boeing Co. (t-51st); Corning Inc. (114th); Ford Motor Co. (42nd); Johnson Control International plc (134th); Koninklijke Philips N.V. (70th); NXP Semiconductors N.V. (111th); PayPal Holdings Inc. (t-231st); Skyworks Solutions, Inc. (141st); Textron Inc. (t-202nd); Visa Inc. (176th)
• Wednesday: Arm Holdings plc (t-208th); Boston Scientific Corp. (72nd); Meta Platforms, Inc. (105th); Microsoft Corp. (18th); The Procter & Gamble Co. (106th); Qualcomm Inc. (3rd); Sonos Inc. (t-227th); United Microelectronics Corp. (t-136th)
• Thursday: Altria, Inc. (t-211th); Amazon.com, Inc. (20th); Apple Inc. (8th); Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (t-300th); British American Tobacco plc (t-187th); Corteva, Inc. (83rd); Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (159th); InterDigital, Inc. (73rd); Mastercard Inc. (t-239th); Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (t-257th); Sanofi S.A. (132nd)
• Friday: Eaton Corp. (197th); Magna International Inc. (166th); Sony Group Corp. (16th)