The Electronic Frontier Foundation partnered with several countries, including Russia and Vietnam, to “defend” against their being “unfairly bullied” by the U.S. Trade Representative’s annual Special 301 report, said an EFF blog post Monday. The USTR report reviews IP protections and other market practices in foreign countries, highlighting those nations with the most problematic IP standards (see 1502060043). Countries like Russia and Vietnam are being asked to “to adopt failed U.S.-style copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret rules,” said EFF. “This would be absolutely fair enough, if the standards by which the other countries were assessed were globally-agreed standards, and if their adherence to those standards were assessed objectively, using a consistent and predictable methodology,” it said: “But they're not; rather, the USTR has free reign to castigate its trading partners for whatever reasons it can come up with.” The "mere listing of a country on the Priority Watch List has applied a heavy extra-legal influence on that country to amend its intellectual property laws and policies to accord with the USTR’s unilateral demand,” said EFF’s filing to the USTR.

Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam should be added to the U.S. Trade Representative’s “priority watch list” in its annual Special 301 report, the International Intellectual Property Alliance said in a news release Friday. The USTR report reviews IP protections and other market practices in foreign countries, highlighting those nations with the most problematic IP standards. The Association of American Publishers, the Entertainment Software Association, the Independent Television & Film Alliance, MPAA and RIAA are IIPA members. Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Switzerland, Taiwan and United Arab Emirates should be added to the 301 report’s general watch list, said IIPA. The USTR should have “special engagement” with Italy and Spain, it said. “No country, including the U.S., is immune from the harms posed by high levels of unfair practices on the Internet,” said RIAA Executive Vice President Neil Turkewitz in a separate release. But there are “distinctions to be made between the efforts of different countries, and today’s filing highlights practices in some of the countries that have been least responsive in addressing piracy.”

RIAA CEO Cary Sherman endorsed the Copyright Office’s recommendations to apply federal laws to pre-1972 sound recordings, and for terrestrial broadcasters to pay public performance royalties. The CO released a 245-page music licensing study Thursday (see 1502050055). “The office recognizes a consensus within the industry that the current system for licensing musical compositions is broken,” Sherman said in a Thursday statement. “Artists and labels behind iconic recordings made before 1972 deserve to be compensated by digital radio outlets like Pandora and Sirius.” The study confirmed Broadcast Music Inc.’s “position that music licensing, and specifically the archaic rules under which BMI must operate, is in need of change,” said CEO Mike O’Neill in a statement. He was referring to the consent decrees that govern BMI and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

The U.S. had the highest IP protections rating in a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global IP Center. The report was done by Pugatch Consilium, a market research firm, and analyzed the IP economies of 30 countries that account for nearly 80 percent of global GDP, it said. Countries were measured against 30 IP indicators, which included protections for patents, copyrights, trade secrets and IP enforcement both online and according to international treaties. The highest possible score was 30. The U.S. (28.53), the U.K. (27.61), Germany (27.28), France (27.16) and Singapore (25.38) had the highest scores. Thailand (7.10), India (7.23) and Vietnam (7.84) had the lowest scores. “Although the United States has introduced several successful initiatives to shut down rogue websites -- such as the ‘In Our Sites’ operation -- for a top-tier economy, it scores poorly in the enforcement indicators due to ineffective border measures to seize counterfeit goods,” the report said.

The Media Institute asked the Supreme Court to review Kienitz v. Sconnie Nation, the organization said in a news release Tuesday. The institute filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the court to review an “errant expansion of the fair use doctrine that is gaining traction among lower courts and eroding the rights of photographers,” it said. Photographer Michael Kienitz alleged that Sconnie Nation, a clothing company, infringed his copyrighted photo of a public official, said the institute. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court ruling that the company’s use of the photo was fair use, it said.

A proposal by IEEE to update the IEEE Standards Association’s (IEEE-SA) patent policy won't be challenged by the Department of Justice, DOJ said Monday. IEEE had contacted the DOJ and asked whether the proposed revisions to its patent policy violated antitrust laws. Based on reasons IEEE gave DOJ for the patent update, such as adding clarity to “the commitment patent holders voluntarily make regarding the licensing of patent claims,” Justice said it decided not to challenge the new patent policy. “IEEE’s decision to update its policy, if adopted by the IEEE Board, has the potential to help patent holders and standards implementers to reach mutually beneficial licensing agreements and to facilitate the adoption of pro-competitive standards,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse, who heads Justice's Antitrust Division.

Public Knowledge filed a joint brief on behalf of Google's case against Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood because “Section 230 is a critical part of letting us all communicate online,” said a PK spokeswoman Monday. Without that part of the Communications Act, it's “very easy for overbroad liability and procedural fishing expeditions to shut down intermediaries necessary for communication and encourage them to restrict and restrain their customers' communications even more,” she said. “We've criticized Google's restrictions of customer communications in the past -- restrictions put in place due to pressures applied in the absence of protections like section 230.” That responded to accusations by David Lowery, a music business lecturer at the University of Georgia and a songwriter, that PK is among many advocacy groups serving the exclusive interests of Google (see 1502020047).

Intellectual property rights deserve the same protections as physical property rights, said an open letter to Congress from 67 advocacy groups, industry associations and scholars Monday. “We must ensure that American creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs are protected from theft to maintain international competitiveness in the digital economy,” Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform president, said in a blog post publicizing the letter. Representatives from the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Policy Innovation, the International Center for Law and Economics and the National Small Business Association are among the letter’s signatories.

Broadcast Music Inc. settled with a Louisiana restaurant over its alleged infringement of songs in BMI’s repertory, said documents filed in U.S. District Court in Baton Rouge Tuesday. Papi’s Mexican Cuisine allegedly failed to license songs played there, which included the works of Van Morrison and Vince Gill. BMI was joined by other plaintiffs including Universal Music and Praxis International Communications. Papi’s will make regular payments to the plaintiffs through Feb. 15, 2016, said the documents in docket 3:14-cv-758. Papi's didn't comment.

It’s big business for “litigation factories that take advantages of anomalies in the patent system to extort financial settlements out of businesses large and small,” said Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler Tuesday in a blog post on the formation last week of the United for Patent Reform. Cisco is a charter member (see 1501150035). United for Patent Reform is “a broad-based coalition of businesses” that will work “to fight wanton abuse of the patent litigation system by patent assertion entities (PAEs),” said Chandler. PAEs are companies that “neither invent nor produce products, but simply buy patents for litigation value,” he said. Citing Allied Security Trust data, Chandler said PAEs bought as many patents in the first half of 2014 as they did in all of 2013. The number of lawsuits brought by PAEs in 2014 were triple those of 2006, he said. “As our coalition’s membership illustrates, this is a problem that includes businesses of all shapes and sizes.” Among the congressional remedies the coalition seeks are measures that put the “burden of litigation costs on those who bring suits that prove to be for extortion value only or where parties demand inefficient, costly litigation procedures,” he said. “Over the next weeks and months, Cisco, in conjunction with United for Patent Reform and its member companies, will make the case for patent reform in the hope that Congress will approve meaningful reforms soon. This is imperative if we’re to break the outlandish and exploitive business model that has encouraged patent assertion entities to thrive.”