President-elect Donald Trump will likely take “a businessman’s approach" to intellectual-property issues, said American Enterprise Institute Visiting Fellow Thomas Sydnor. That means “one that focuses on practical issues, like cost-effective enforceability,” Sydnor wrote in a Wednesday blog post. What Trump will do on intellectual property may be easier to predict than other policy areas, Sydnor said. “President-elect Trump will soon become -- by far -- the most experienced user of domestic and international IP rights ever to serve as the President of the United States,” he said. “During his long business career, Mr. Trump pursued sophisticated, usually unified, branding strategies based upon his last name, had great success in the copyright industries, and has used the IP-like rights granted by state laws that protect reputational, privacy, and publicity rights.” Trump should focus on making it easier for businesses to enforce their IP rights, said Sydnor. He should support legislative efforts to overhaul the Copyright Office, like the one by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the AEI fellow said. Trump should oppose sub-market compulsory licenses including American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers/Broadcast Music Inc. consent decrees from the 1940s, Sydnor said. Trump opposed free trade agreements, but he should consider renegotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership, Sydnor said. Or the U.S. Trade Representative could better enforce existing trade agreements, he said.

The Association of American Publishers said it selected former Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante as its next president and CEO. Pallante will succeed retiring AAP President Tom Allen Tuesday, the group said Thursday. Two months ago, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden ousted Pallante as head of the Copyright Office. Pallante resigned from the LOC entirely shortly after being reassigned to be an adviser on the library's digital strategy (see 1610210061, 1610240052 and 1610250062). Pallante previously worked at the Guggenheim Museums, the Authors Guild and National Writers Union. Pallante “is a creative, forward-thinking leader who has earned the deep respect of members of Congress as well as intellectual property experts,” said AAP Chairman YS Chi in a news release.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized the Association of American Publishers and major music industry interests for recent letters urging President-elect Donald Trump to strongly enforce IP rights and to push for changes to copyright law that appear to favor rightsholders. RIAA and other top music industry entities asked Trump last week to seek “strong protections” to protect IP rights, saying top tech sector firms “should follow others' example to effectively stop theft and assure fair payment.” AAP asked Trump last week to push Congress to make fixes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (see 1612130023 and 1612150033). EFF believes AAP and the music companies were pushing for a revamp of DMCA Section 512's safe harbor provisions, which “is a bad idea for everyone, including musicians,” said Policy Fellow Kerry Sheehan in a Tuesday blog post. “The music industry has benefited enormously from the Internet’s growth. Not only are there more opportunities for musicians to share their music with a global audience, but the industry itself is profiting handsomely.” AAP “also implies it wants even stricter enforcement against device manufacturers -- presumably through laws like Section 1201 that prohibit users from getting around digital locks on copyrighted content,” Sheehan said. “But locking down users’ devices, as with Digital Rights Management, is a massively unpopular strategy that impairs users’ ability to freely express themselves, interferes with access to books in accessible formats, hinders competition, and takes away users’ freedom to tinker with their own devices.” It appears “Big Content will never stop looking for more government support for their traditional business model, no matter what the cost to the Internet -- and they are never satisfied,” Sheehan said. “We urge the incoming administration to resist industry demands for more copyright regulation that, if history is any guide, will be both expensive and ineffective.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator’s strategic plan for IP rights enforcement for FY 2017-19, while Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said he’s “pleased” to implement it. IPEC’s plan, released Monday, urged improving citizens' understanding of the impacts of IP rights infringement and enhancing the domestic strategy for enforcing IP rights. Goals also include minimizing IP-infringing activity online and facilitating lawful trade activities (see 1612120062). The plan “seems to put the weight of the federal government behind these shadow regulations,” EFF senior staff attorney Mitch Stoltz said in a Wednesday blog post. “The plan gives lip service to transparency, good research, and respect for freedom of speech. Unfortunately, the plan also praises and encourages the negotiation of private agreements between Internet companies that fail to uphold those same values.” The document does contain “a strong statement about the importance of limitations on copyright (as well as trademark and patent rights),” Stoltz said. “But neither a shout-out to fair use nor the talisman of ‘multistakeholder’ policymaking are enough to protect Internet users against censorship, nor to give them a voice in the functioning of the Internet.” DHS supports the IPEC strategy and will “advance policy initiatives necessary to strengthen IP enforcement,” Johnson said Tuesday in a statement.

House Judiciary Committee leaders’ policy proposal on Copyright Office operations and IT continued to draw a mix of praise and concern from stakeholders Thursday after its unveiling. It calls for the CO to have more autonomy from the Library of Congress and for changes to the process for selecting a Register of Copyrights to lead the office, plus seeks an alternative copyright small claims process in line with a 2013 CO proposal (see 1612080061). NAB believes the document from House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and committee ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich., is “an important step forward” in the committee’s copyright legislative review, said CEO Gordon Smith. “As proposals from leadership in both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees recognize, a modern [CO] is essential to the ability of copyright owners and users to effectively serve consumers in today's digital marketplace.” The National Music Publishers’ Association hopes the “announcement signals a move towards making the necessary updates to copyright law that finally would allow songwriters to be paid fairly for their work,” said CEO David Israelite. Public Knowledge has “some significant questions and potential concerns” with the Goodlatte/Conyers plan, said General Counsel Ryan Clough. “Like any other government agency -- particularly one with a documented history of regulatory capture -- the [CO] needs rigorous accountability and oversight. It is unclear whether the current proposal would eliminate all supervision by the Librarian of Congress, making the [CO] a free-floating regulatory agency housed within the legislative branch.” The small claims plan “will require substantial further deliberation,” Clough said. “It is critical that Congress not create a new litigation process that copyright trolls could hijack. It is also unclear why this new forum for lawsuits should be housed within the legislative branch as opposed to other federal courts.”

The National Music Publishers' Association said it reached agreement with YouTube for the payment of unclaimed royalties for videos using music whose ownership wasn't previously known. The agreement, which takes effect next year, will result in the disbursement of millions in previously unclaimed nonperformance royalties, NMPA said Thursday. The opt-in period for music publishers begins Monday and lasts through Feb. 28, NMPA said. YouTube will provide participating publishers after the opt-in period with a list of songs it previously didn't have ownership information for, NMPA said. Publishers will initially be able to claim royalties during a three-month window on those songs for the period Aug. 1, 2012-Dec. 31, 2015. Royalties undistributed after the claim window will be disbursed based on each publisher's market share and revenue paid for known YouTube usage figures during the same period, NMPA said. Future royalty claims will be calculated based on 12-month YouTube usage periods between Jan. 1, 2016, and Dec. 31, 2019, NMPA said. “It is essential that we work with digital services like YouTube … to fix the challenge of incomplete ownership information to ensure royalties are no longer unmatched and music owners are paid accurately by the platforms that rely on their work,” said NMPA President David Israelite in a news release. “The revenue earned by the music industry on YouTube continues to grow significantly year over year, and we're committed to making sure that publishers are paid for the usage of their works on their platform,” said Tamara Hrivnak, YouTube head-music partnerships, Americas, in the news release.

“It's imperative that we continue pushing to protect” IP rights, said House Commerce Committee Vice Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., at a news conference about an International Intellectual Property Alliance report that core copyright industries contributed $1.2 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product during 2015. The report “will help” the House Judiciary Committee in its work on possible legislation for its Copyright Act modernization review, said committee ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich. These are “tangible metrics” of the value of IP to the U.S. economy as House Judiciary considers its next steps on copyright legislation, said House IP Subcommittee Vice Chairman Doug Collins, R-Ga. Major U.S. copyright holders' sales of products to overseas markets increased to almost $177 billion in 2015, from $164 billion in 2014 and almost $155 billion in 2013, IIPA said.

Pointy Vulcan ears and a bowl haircut aren't enough characteristics to define a distinctive character, and the Star Trek universe elements that Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios cite as evidence of copyright infringement by a fan film are for the most part unprotectable, said defendants Axanar Productions and Alec Peters in a filing (in Pacer) Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles supporting their motion for summary judgment. They also said their Axanar online fan film works qualify as fair use because the Copyright Act says copying "for purposes of 'comment' may be fair use without any limitation as to the type of comment or the target of the comment." They said the Prelude to Axanar short film is obviously intended as a mockumentary, saying it's "irrelevant" they didn't explicitly claim fair use as parody or satire before being sued. In a reply brief (in Pacer) Monday in support of their motion for partial summary judgment (see 1611250021), Paramount/CBS said the Copyright Act allows the plaintiffs exclusive rights to derivative works and the Axanar/Peters' read of the law "would destroy the longstanding rights of content owners." Paramount/CBS also said Axanar/Peters haven't demonstrated the application of the fair use defense and disputed that the works qualify as satire or parody: "By the Defendants' own admission, [they were] never meant to be anything other than a 'professional' and 'independent' Star Trek work." The plaintiffs also said there's no precedent for saying creation of a non-satirical sequel or prequel is transformative.

The Department of Commerce's Internet Policy Task Force scheduled a meeting for Dec. 9 to facilitate a “constructive” stakeholder discussion about “ways to promote a more robust and collaborative digital marketplace for copyrighted works,” the IPTF and NTIA said Thursday. The meeting could result in the creation of a multistakeholder process with working groups to “tackle specific issues,” IPTF said. The gathering will “focus on initiatives in this space that relate to standards development, interoperability across digital registries, and cross-industry collaboration, to understand the current state of affairs, identify challenges, and discuss paths forward,” IPTF said. “It will also be an opportunity to explore potential approaches to the future adoption and integration into the online marketplace of relevant emerging technologies, such as blockchain technology and open-source platforms.” The event is to run 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Patent and Trademark Office's Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters. IPTF issued a white paper in January that recommended Congress pass legislation to amend guidance to courts for determining statutory damages in copyright infringement cases. It supported the Copyright Office's 2013 proposal to establish a small claims copyright court but opposed using legislation to address remixes’ status within the fair-use doctrine and digital transmissions’ place in the existing first-sale doctrine (see 1601280065).

The Radio Music License Committee filed an antitrust lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia against the Global Music Rights (GMR) performing rights organization. RMLC said in Friday's complaint (in Pacer) that GMR is seeking licensing rates that are about three times the fees paid by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Inc. ASCAP and BMI now seek higher rates from radio stations, citing the GMR rates as a new benchmark, RMLC said. It sought an injunction (in Pacer) from the court to prevent GMR from charging “monopoly” prices for a license during litigation. A radio station would be forced to pay the higher GMR rates beginning Jan. 1 when songs covered by other PROs will move to GMR's catalog, RMLC said. The committee proposed that GMR be required to submit to a judicial rate-making procedure similar to the consent decrees on ASCAP and BMI rates. The organization settled a similar antitrust case with the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers in 2015. SESAC agreed to engage in binding arbitration with RMLC when voluntary agreement can't be reached (see 1507240049). GMR didn't comment Monday. The lawsuit “is an important proceeding for radio operators to watch as it may determine how much radio broadcasters will have to pay for their music next year, and in the years ahead,” said Wilkinson Barker radio lawyer David Oxenford in a Sunday blog post. “Most radio stations will be paying GMR in addition to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, but the litigation is important as it may establish how much any station will be paying to these organizations.” The suit “may set a precedent for other music users (including TV and digital music users) who themselves will no doubt face GMR royalty claims in the future,” Oxenford said.