Sat.Apr 30, 2022 - Fri.May 06, 2022

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Meta Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Counterfeit Ads

Plagiarism Today

On April 22, artist JL Cook filed a class action lawsuit against Facebook owner Meta , alleging that the company is failing to take adequate steps to prevent counterfeit ads from appearing on its site. Cook is an artist who sells sculptures of snakes on her site Snakearts.com. However, she claims that counterfeit sellers are stealing her images and creating ads for knock off works on Facebook using them.

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Anti-Copyright Hyperbole Fails to Sway the Canadian Government

Hugh Stephens Blog

Call it a victory for common sense. The Canadian Budget Implementation Bill, which includes needed amendments to the Copyright Act to implement Canada’s CUSMA treaty commitment to extend its term of copyright protection to bring it into alignment with its major trading partners, has now been tabled.

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Does My Non-Profit Need Trademark Protection?

Erik K Pelton

The following is an edited transcript of my video Does My Non-Profit Need Trademark Protection? We have been blessed at EMP&A to work with dozens and dozens of nonprofits over the years, doing all kinds of great work. Some of them are in health and science fighting disease. Some of them are combating poverty and homelessness. Some of them are campaigning for equity and justice and many, many other topics as well.

Trademark 147
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US Court Orders Every ISP in the United States to Block Illegal Streaming Sites

TorrentFreak

Earlier this year, producer and cinema investor Moshe Edery fired warning shots across the bows of Mastercard, Visa and American Express for continuing to provide payment processing to pirate streaming sites. Edery, the co-founder of Screen iL, an international TV streaming platform aimed at Israelis living abroad, said the companies must be aware that pirate sites are involved in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering.

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Software Composition Analysis: The New Armor for Your Cybersecurity

Speaker: Blackberry, OSS Consultants, & Revenera

Software is complex, which makes threats to the software supply chain more real every day. 64% of organizations have been impacted by a software supply chain attack and 60% of data breaches are due to unpatched software vulnerabilities. In the U.S. alone, cyber losses totaled $10.3 billion in 2022. All of these stats beg the question, “Do you know what’s in your software?

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NBC Reporter Accused of Plagiarism in 11 Articles

Plagiarism Today

Yesterday, NBC News published a note to their readers that said they had detected 11 articles written by one of their reporters that “did not meet our standards for original material.” . Specifically, the note said that the reporter in question had copied passages that were “not central to the stories” and instead represented background or supplemental material.

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Judging Patent Cases

Patently-O

by Dennis Crouch. For the chart below, I tabulated about 7,000 individual votes from the Federal Circuit Judges in patent cases decided 2014-2021. For each judge, I show the percentage of individual decisions that sided with the patent challenger; or patent owner in each case. The results here are not highly surprising. Judges Moore, Newman, O’Malley, and Stoll are all more likely to favor the patentee while Judges Lourie, Hughes, Dyk, Prost, and Reyna relatively more likely to side with

Patent 137

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Russian Cinemas Are Showing Pirated Movies Downloaded From Torrents

TorrentFreak

As the horrors caused by Russia’s invasion of neighbor Ukraine continue, the geopolitical and financial implications are being felt throughout the world. Dozens of countries aligned with the defense of Ukraine have implemented unprecedented sanctions. From withering restrictions on Russia’s banking system to a simple refusal to do business, the desire is to restrict Putin’s ability to wage war.

Cinema 144
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3 Count: Blocking USA

Plagiarism Today

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday. 1: New York Piracy Ruling May Set Precedent for Web-Blocking. First off today, Chris Cooke at Complete Music Update reports that a New York federal judge has issued an injunction against three suspected pirate sites that aims to require all internet service providers (ISPs) in the United States to block access to those sites.

Music 212
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Dutch Supreme Court confirms look-a-likes can constitute an image under image right law

The IPKat

Last year, this GuestKat reported on an interesting case involving F1 Driver Max Verstappen. Several months after claiming his first World Championship, Verstappen now can add another victory to his trophies, as the Dutch Supreme Court rendered a principle judgment in his favor. Background What was the case about? In 2016, Verstappen was featured in a TV commercial for Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo.

Law 131
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Biotechnology at the Supreme Court—Will the U.S. Government Back Amgen’s Petition?

IP Watchdog

Earlier this year, we discussed Amgen’s petition for Supreme Court review of the Federal Circuit’s affirmance invalidating several antibody patent claims based on a lack of enablement for genus claims. At that time, we believed Amgen had a slim chance of its petition being granted—mainly because the Supreme Court denied a similar petition from Idenix in 2021 (No. 20-380, January 19, 2021).

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IPO Diversity in Innovation Toolkit

Women and diverse employees have the technical skill and knowledge, yet their contributions are not patented at the same rate as those of their male counterparts.This toolkit can help organizations move the needle on achieving gender parity in innovation.

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IP Reveries: Class 2 – Interrogating the I – ‘Intelligence’ in IPR (Part 1)

SpicyIP

The IP Reveries series is an experimental ‘fun’ series set in an imaginary classroom where we are using a dialogue format to raise questions and discussions around IP that traditionally don’t find a place to get voiced either due to long standing assumptions, or due to being seen as ‘too trivial’ to discuss in more formal settings.

IP 130
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3 Count: Not Very Private

Plagiarism Today

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday. 1: India Orders VPN Providers to Log and Hand Over Customer Data. First off today, Michael Kan at PC Magazine reports that India is enacting a new policy that, if enforced, would require virtual private network (VPN) providers to collect, store and turn over user data. The move is not directly copyright-related and actually is meant to better empower the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to deal with

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Generic Industry Skepticism Irrelevant to Non-Obviousness

Patently-O

by Dennis Crouch. In a divided opinion, the Federal Circuit rejected a PTAB non-obviousness decision–holding that “generic industry skepticism” is irrelevant to the question of obviousness. Auris Health, Inc. v. Intuitive Surgical Operations, Inc. , 2021-1732, — F.4th —, 2022 WL 1275241 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 29, 2022). I suggest the Auris Health majority departs from KSR by again drawing sharp lines rather than allowing for a functional, flexible analysis.

Art 126
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Google General Counsel’s Clarion Call for U.S. Patent System Reform Should Not Be Heeded

IP Watchdog

On April 28, Google’s General Counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado authored a post published on Google’s official blog to voice concerns felt by one of the world’s richest corporations that the U.S. patent system is currently in a state of growing crisis. The post offers several suggestions, each sanctioned by Google, as to steps that can be taken in all three branches of the U.S. federal government to address patent quality, abusive litigation and forum shopping.

Inventor 128
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U.S. Court Orders Pirate Site Blocking. Internet Should Break Any Day Now.

The Illusion of More

And if it did, really at this point…? As reported on TorrentFreak yesterday, the District Court for the Southern District of New York handed down three nearly identical rulings in copyright infringement complaints against three pirate streaming entities. Finding for the plaintiffs, who comprised several Israeli film and entertainment companies, there was nothing remarkable about […].

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3 Count: Can’t Help Appealing

Plagiarism Today

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday. 1: Songwriter’s Heirs Can’t Reclaim Rights to Elvis Hit, Judge Rules. First off today, Blake Brittain at Reuters reports that the estate of Hugo Peretti, the songwriter that co-wrote the Elvis Presley hit Can’t Help Falling in Love , has lost an appeal to try and reclaim their rights to the composition.

Licensing 195
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Should Lawyers Offer A Brand Creation Service?

azrights

Though many important decisions people make when creating a new brand identity are intellectual property decisions, IP lawyers are rarely involved in the naming and brand creation process. . As a trademark lawyer, I began to ask myself why? I had written books to explain the central role of IP in branding, Legally Branded and Intellectual Property Revolution and realised that to get the answers I was seeking I’d have to dig deeper and find out what’s involved to create a brand.

Brands 119
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Reyna Splits from CAFC on Weight of General Industry Skepticism in Obviousness Analysis

IP Watchdog

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Friday, April 29, held that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) erred in finding that Auris Health, Inc. had failed to demonstrate that the claims of Intuitive Surgical Operations, Inc.’s patent for robotic surgery systems were unpatentable as obvious. The CAFC said the PTAB impermissibly rested its motivation-to-combine finding on evidence of “general skepticism” about the field of invention and thus vacated and remanded.

Invention 128
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No Longer “Levitating”: Dua Lipa’s Song Bogged Down by Two Lawsuits

IPilogue

Photo by Smorazanm ( Pixabay ). Meena Alnajar is an IPilogue Writer, IP Innovation Clinic Fellow, and a 2L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. Dua Lipa’s 2020 pop hit “Levitating” is facing copyright infringement lawsuits as of March 2022. Two separate song-writing teams, those for Artikal Sound System and Cory Daye , claim the song ripped off their own and filed complaints with their state federal courts.

Music 118
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is there a difference between "clinically tested" and "clinically proven" to reasonable consumers?

43(B)log

Williams v. Reckitt Benckiser LLC, No. 20-23564-CIV-COOKE/GOODMAN, 2021 WL 8129371 (S.D. Fla. Dec. 15, 2021) (R&R) This long and citation-heavy opinion would be a good cheat sheet for looking at class action settlement approvals generally, especially in the 11th Circuit. Courts often are skeptical about small differences in wording when plaintiffs challenge them as causing deception.

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MakeMyTrip vs Booking.com – Looking at the Delhi High Court Injunction on Usage of Adwords

SpicyIP

We’re pleased to bring you a timely guest post by Sangita Sharma on a recent order by the Delhi High Court, on the usage of a competitor’s registered trademarks as keywords or adwords. Sangita is a 3rd year student at Gujarat National Law University and has previously written for us here and here. MakeMyTrip vs Booking.com – Looking at the Delhi High Court Injunction on Usage of Adwords.

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Weaponization of the PTAB Presents First Challenge for Vidal

IP Watchdog

On April 27, Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), both members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, wrote to Kathi Vidal, the newly confirmed Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), to inquire as to why the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is allowing itself to become weaponized.

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AnimeKisa.tv Shuts Down, Says That Pirates Don’t Like to Pay or View Ads

TorrentFreak

While many new pirate sites have a profit motive right from the start, simply getting a service up and running can be fun challenge for those with the right skills. For operators with disposable income, a free-to-use site can offer all kinds of rewards other than money. Building a community, meeting new friends, and doing something a little unusual can all yield rewards that money can’t buy.

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Once Again, LinkedIn Can’t Use CFAA To Stop Unwanted Scraping–hiQ v. LinkedIn

Technology & Marketing Law Blog

The hiQ v. LinkedIn lawsuit started in 2017. In 2019, the Ninth Circuit upheld the district court’s injunction ruling in favor of hiQ. The Supreme Court vacated that decision and told the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its ruling in light of the Supreme Court’s Van Buren ruling. On remand, the Ninth Circuit again says that hiQ is entitled to injunctive relief, because LinkedIn’s claims under the CFAA don’t neutralize hiQ’s colorable tortious interference claims against LinkedIn.

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The Data Quality Imperative

Velocity of Content

In a previous blog post, entitled “ Knowledge Graphs as Belief System Encapsulations ”, I presented the view that “knowledge must necessarily be associated with a degree of confidence that expresses the strength of our conviction about the accuracy of the information.”. In this follow-up blog post I want to discuss the impact of data quality on the production of knowledge.

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CAFC Clarifies Experimental Use Exception, Reduces Damages in Partial Reversal of Sunoco Patent Infringement Win

IP Watchdog

On April 29, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed in part, reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded a decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois regarding alleged infringement by U.S. Venture Inc., (Venture) of certain patents owned by Sunoco Partners Marketing & Terminals L.P., (Sunoco).

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RIAA & Rightscorp Defeat Renewed ‘False & Fraudulent’ Piracy Notice Claims

TorrentFreak

Under US copyright law, Internet providers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances.”. Until a few years ago Internet providers rarely applied such a drastic measure but, backed by several court orders, ISPs are increasingly being held to this standard. Music Companies sued RCN. Internet provider RCN is among the targeted providers.

Music 117
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USPTO Allows Applicants to File PDF with DOCX Submissions on Temporary Basis

JD Supra Law

In a notice published last week in the Federal Register (87 Fed. Reg. 25226), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that it will allow Applicants to submit an applicant-generated PDF version of applications filed in DOCX format along with the DOCX file when filing an application using the Office's Patent Center interface. In August of 2020, the Office announced that for applications that are not filed in DOCX format after January 1, 2022, such filings would carry a surcharge of $400.

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Trademark Enforcement Strategies – The Ultimate Path to Protection

Kashishipr

Trademarks provide multiple crucial advantages to businesses and customers alike. They validate the source of products or services. Additionally, they help the customers distinguish between brands and understand the quality of the products they buy. Trademarks also carry all the image and reputation a brand builds over the years. The value of a trademark may be weakened or eventually lost in the scenario where its owner fails to safeguard or monitor the exclusive Trademark Rights in the market

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The Emperors’ New Codes: Understanding IP Community Ambivalence Toward Digital Assets

IP Watchdog

The rise in the value of crypto currencies in just three years to $3 trillion is vexing to businesses, investors and IP professional who are struggling to understanding where they fit in. The ascendance of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as an asset class also has caught practically everyone off-guard. Many intellectual property owners believe that these blockchain-based disruptions have created opportunity, while others see a darker and more impermeant scenario.

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Piracy Increases ‘Internet Buzz’ Which Boosts Legitimate TV-Show Viewership

TorrentFreak

Piracy is a complicated phenomenon and the reported effects on legal consumption are not always straightforward. The issue has been researched extensively with both positive and negative effects being reported, often varying based on the type of content studied. A new academic study published in the “Information & Management” journal adds another piece to the puzzle.

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A patent small claims court – what do you think?

Patently-O

By Jason Rantanen. The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) is an independent federal agency that’s charged with recommending improvements to administrative process and procedure. The position of Chairman is currently vacant, so the Vice-Chairman, Matthew Lee Wiener , is serving as Acting Chair. A key aspect of ACUS is soliciting input from the public.

Patent 111
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CEDRO vs. GOOGLE DISCOVER:  Is GOOGLE DISCOVER a news aggregator?

Kluwer Copyright Blog

Judgment nº208/2021 of Madrid Commercial Court nº16 (December 20 th , 2021). Context and facts. This case concerns a dispute between the collecting management organisation CEDRO [1] and GOOGLE DISCOVER for non-payment of fair compensation for the limitation established in article 32.2 (now abrogated by the implementation of the CDSM Directive [2] ) of the Spanish Copyright Act (SCA) between 6 December 2016 and 31 October 2020.

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This Week in Washington IP: AI Applications in Cyberspace, Innovating Active Carbon Management Technologies, and INTA’s Annual Meeting Live+

IP Watchdog

This week in Washington IP news, Senate committees are planning to host hearings on the applications that artificial intelligence can have in cyberspace, both for good and bad actors, as well as legislative proposals that could force social media platforms to increase transparency regarding algorithms for targeted advertising and news feeds. During the first half of the week, the International Trademark Association hosts its first in-person Annual Meeting since the COVID-19 pandemic began, altho

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Facebook Can’t Shake Publicity Rights Claim–Hepp v. Facebook

Technology & Marketing Law Blog

Third parties created ads featuring Hepp without her consent. From the complaint (Hepp is the upper right image; the photo was taken from security camera footage): Facebook ran some of the ads featuring Hepp’s image. The district court dismissed Hepp’s suit against Facebook on Section 230 grounds, but the Third Circuit reversed , classifying publicity rights claims into Section 230’s IP exception (in disagreement with the 9th Circuit’s ccBill ruling).