The U.S. Supreme Court today invited the Solicitor General’s views in a copyright case that asks the High Court to grant a petition on the question of whether the Copyright Act’s preemption clause allows a business “to invoke traditional state-law contract remedies to enforce a promise not to copy and use its content?” The petition was brought by ML Genius Holdings (Genius), an online platform for transcribing and annotating song lyrics, against Google and LyricFind, which Genius claims breached its website Terms of Service by “stealing Genius’s work and placing the lyrics on its own competing site, drastically decreasing web traffic to Genius as a result.”

This week in Washington IP news, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding an Executive Business Meeting in which they will discuss the Pride in Patent Ownership Act, while several Senate subcommittees hold hearings related to American manufacturing, diversity in entrepreneurship, and increasing access to capital in underserved markets. Elsewhere, IPWatchdog is hosting a webinar discussing USPTO Director Kathi Vidal’s tenure, the USPTO will host a virtual Boardside Chat with Deputy Director Derrick Brent, and the CSIS looks at the latest meeting of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC).

Starlink signals can be manipulated. In fact, they already have been, by unauthorized third parties. The agents are proclaiming their success and letting the world know that there is nothing Starlink can do about it. I’m inclined to agree. A professor at the University of Texas has found a way to use Starlink signals to develop a new global navigation technology that would operate independently of GPS or its European, Russian, and Chinese equivalents (Starlink’s terminals have also been successfully hacked, but that’s a different issue. This article deals with the unauthorized usage and alteration of the Starlink signals).

A number of lower-income countries (LMICs) on Tuesday, December 6, proposed new text to the World Trade Organization (WTO) urging them to adopt it and proceed with an extension of the waiver of IP rights for COVID-19-related technologies under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of IP Rights (TRIPS). The text was sent following the United States’ announcement on the same day that it supports a delay of the deadline to decide whether to extend the waiver to diagnostics and therapeutics pending an International Trade Commission investigation that the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has ordered.

Who holds the patent on gravity? Who collects the royalties for the speed of light? In this episode of IP Goes Pop!, Volpe Koenig Shareholders and podcasts hosts, Michael Snyder and Joseph Gushue, explore what intellectual property (trade secrets, trademarks, patents and copyrights) cannot protect. Hint- some things excluded from IP protection include the Laws of Nature such as gravity, the speed of light and even Einstein’s theory of relativity E=MC2. Abstract ideas are another. But what other “can’t”s stand between you, your idea, and protections for it?

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Office of the United States Trade Representative says it supports delaying a decision to extend the waiver of IP rights under the TRIPS Agreement to diagnostics and therapeutics and orders an investigation be conducted on the matter by the U.S. International Trade Commission; Ericsson and Apple Settle all patent litigation; the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announces the February launch of an accelerated program for patents related to cancer research technology; Pfizer countersues Moderna in an ongoing patent case related to COVID-19 vaccines; Cisco avoids paying $2 billion in fines in a patent infringement case; and Huawei signs a deal with a tech competitor in a landmark licensing agreement.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) yesterday denied a petition for writ of mandamus asking the Delaware district court to vacate an order to produce certain documents to ensure compliance with Chief Judge Connolly’s standing orders on initial disclosures in patent litigation cases. Nimitz Technologies LLC petitioned the CAFC asking it to vacate a November 10, 2022, order by the Delaware court demanding Nimitz produce documents including communications between Nimitz owner, Mark Hall, his counsel, and patent assertion entity IP Edge and the related entity, Mavexar. Following a failure to timely comply with the standing orders, Nimitz had initially told the court that Hall was the sole owner and LLC member of Nimitz and asserted in a statement that Nimitz “has not entered into any arrangement with a Third-Party Funder, as defined in the Court’s Standing Order Regarding Third-Party Litigation Funding Arrangements.”

Wi-Fi has been universally recognized as a term for non-cellular, wireless connectivity to the Internet for at least two decades, and reliance on Wi-Fi has been increasing as more devices become “connected,” such as smart outlets, TVs, audio systems, and the like, in a connected household. Similarly, consumers have become more dependent on the bandwidth of Wi-Fi for bandwidth-intensive activities, such as streaming video, video conferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emerging “metaverse.”

In the United States, our ability to innovate drives our economic advantage. Have policymakers taken that for granted? To find out, Bruce Berman, founder of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding, interviewed renowned professor David Teece and Patrick Kilbride of the Global Innovation Policy Center of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Episode 6, Season 2 of “Understanding IP Matters.” Their wide-ranging conversation explores the relationship between intellectual property rights, investment, and the rule of law.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee gears up for an Executive Business Meeting Thursday where members will in part consider S.2774, the Pride in Patent Ownership Act, co-sponsored by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), a number of patent advocacy organizations have sent a joint letter to the committee asking it to oppose the bill. The Pride in Patent Ownership Act (PPOA) is seemingly intended to ensure that the public has access to information about the true owner of a patent. But critics of the bill have noted that it focuses on ownership of patents, and does not seek to provide true transparency by identifying those funding and benefiting from Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) challenges, for instance. Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) last year questioned the bill’s approach, which  would entail penalizing patent owners who fail to record accurate ownership information within 90 days after the issuance date.

The European Union Unified Patent Court (UPC) announced this week that the court’s Sunrise Period will be delayed by two months. The Sunrise Period has a new planned opening date of March 1, 2023, with the entry into force of the UPC Agreement (UPCA) pushed to June 1, 2023. In an official announcement, Klaus Grabinski, President of the UPC Court of Appeal, and Johannes Karcher, Acting Chairman of the Administrative Committee, said, “the additional time is intended to allow future users to prepare themselves for the strong authentication which will be required to access the Case Management System (CMS) and to sign documents.”

At the very end of the movie “The Current War,” Benedict Cumberbatch, the actor who played Thomas Edison, bumps into Michael Shannon, the actor who played George Westinghouse. The two had battled for years over implementations of their respective electric current systems into society, with Westinghouse winning in the end. This particular meeting probably never took place, but the conversation in the movie was rather interesting. 

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) this morning announced support for delaying the deadline to decide whether to extend a waiver of intellectual property rights under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to diagnostics and therapeutics. The USTR also said it has asked the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) “to launch an investigation into COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics and provide information on market dynamics to help inform the discussion around supply and demand, price points, the relationship between testing and treating, and production and access.”

Copyrights are the most widely held form of intellectual property. They are also the most infringed. Many creators are unaware their rights even exist or how they can be used. Most do not have a clue how they impact commerce and society. A range of creators and copyright holders, from high school students to Warner Media to Beyonce, individuals and businesses, have generated a cornucopia of content, fueled by faster digital processing and virtually unlimited storage. In theory, most of it is protected under copyright law. Most people, and many businesses, have been known to infringe them, no matter their value, often with impunity. Earlier this year, the U.S. Copyright Office established a small claims system for copyright to slow infringement and prevent rightful owners, small and large, from being routinely ripped off.