Kaleidescape announced upgrades to its movie server lineup Tuesday. The company replaced the compact Terra 18TB with a 22-terabyte version ($10,995) and replaced the 72TB with the 88TB ($25,995) server. Accompanying Strato C players are priced at $3,995 each. The company's new server lineup offers five storage capacities, starting at 6 terabytes. The 88TB can store nearly 1,500 4K movies and serve up to 10 simultaneous 4K playbacks. If a failed hard drive needs to be replaced, movies are automatically restored from the cloud, the company said.
Leica Camera is moving into the TV market, partnering with Hisense to develop a laser TV for home theater, the companies said Tuesday. The collaboration will combine Hisense’s laser TV expertise and Leica’s projection lens capability to create a short-throw 4K laser TV, they said. Leica plans to show its first branded TV, the Leica Cine 1, at IFA Sept. 2-6 in Berlin.
LG announced Tuesday 4K short-throw projectors using three-channel laser technology in its 2022 CineBeam projector lineup. The HU915QE ($5,999) and HU915QB ($6,499) are designed to produce a 90-inch image at 2.2 inches from the wall or a 120-inch picture at 7.2 inches, the company said. Features of the flagship projectors include adaptive contrast to adjust the projectors’ light sources for each scene and a brightness optimizer to match a room’s ambient light level. The projectors have LG’s webOS platform for access to streaming services. Users can also stream content via screen mirroring, Apple AirPlay 2 and Bluetooth, LG said. The unit has a built-in 2.2-channel 40-watt speaker.
House Judiciary Committee leaders introduced legislation Wednesday to address “significant increases in fraudulent trademark filings.” The Trademark Modernization Act was introduced by Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., House Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chairman Hank Johnson, D-Ga., and subcommittee ranking member Martha Roby, R-Ala. Senate Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chairman Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and ranking member Chris Coons, D-Del., introduced companion legislation. The bill would create “new expedited ex parte cancellation procedures that would allow a new-market entrant or other third party to request cancellation of a trademark registration when the mark was never used or was not used before registration.” It would give the Patent and Trademark Office additional trademark review authority to gather evidence, and clarify “a rebuttable presumption of irreparable harm exists for trademark violations.”
The Senate Intellectual Property Subcommittee scheduled a hearing on preventing poor quality patents for 2 p.m. Wednesday in 226 Dirksen. Witnesses are Patent and Trademark Office Commissioner of Patents Drew Hirshfeld, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Polk Wagner, University of Texas-Austin School of Law professor Melissa Feeney Wasserman, Crowell & Moring partner Teresa Stanek Rea and Santa Clara University School of Law professor Colleen Chien.
Antitrust law shouldn’t be used to settle patent disputes, DOJ Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim said Thursday amid Qualcomm’s antitrust appeal against the FTC (see 1905220035). Antitrust remedies aren’t the proper tools for settling fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms disputes, he told the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation in Paris. Delrahim didn’t directly mention Qualcomm. Relief through contract law is the correct route for deciding proper FRAND interpretations, he said. “Sophisticated commercial parties often view FRAND commitments as a cost-control mechanism” but a more troubling trend is implementers using FRAND “as a source of leverage to demand subcompetitive royalty rates from the owners of patents for new technologies, under threat of litigation,” he said.
Patent and Trademark Office Director Andrei Iancu will testify at 2:30 p.m. March 13 during an oversight hearing before the Senate Intellectual Property Subcommittee in 226 Dirksen.
President Donald Trump signed legislation Wednesday allowing the Patent and Trademark Office to set patent and trademark fees for eight years. HR-6758 also requires the PTO director submit legislative recommendations to Congress “to increase the number of women, minorities, and veterans who participate in entrepreneurship activities and apply for patents.” The Senate had sent the law to Trump earlier this month after passing it under unanimous consent. The PTO study would be with the Small Business Administration.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Friday rejected the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe’s request for tribal sovereign immunity from inter partes review. That got praise from the Software & Information Industry Association. In Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Allergan tried to block the Patent and Trademark Office from re-examining a patent, which a court had invalidated, by selling it to a tribe claiming immunity. SIIA Vice President-Intellectual Property Christopher Mohr called Friday’s order (in Pacer) a win for innovation: “When Congress passed the America Invents Act, it recognized that inter partes proceedings are critical to ensuring patent quality. The Federal Circuit's decision not only ensures the soundness of that system, it also promotes fundamental fairness because when it comes to IPR, every patent owner has to play by the same set of rules.”
Reps. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, and Hank Johnson, D-Ga., introduced legislation Tuesday that would maintain Patent and Trademark Office fee-setting authority. In exchange, PTO would implement modern IT systems and big-data analytics. CTA CEO Gary Shapiro urged Congress to protect “critical” PTO programs like inter partes review (IPR) from “special interest attacks” and applauded the bill’s introduction. The bill drew cheers from Software & Information Industry Association Senior Vice President-Public Policy Mark MacCarthy. PTO Director Andrei Iancu told the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing Tuesday that since enactment of the America Invents Act, fee setting authority allowed the agency to operate more efficiently and recoup necessary costs. He suggested the committee work with the PTO to maintain that authority. Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said the committee’s efforts to “deter patent trolling” through the America Invents Act “have been a resounding success.” The legislation and the recent court decisions “deprived patent trolls of many of the weapons they use to extort payments from innocent companies,” he said. The High Tech Inventors Alliance urged the committee to uphold the America Invents Act, the IPR process and precedents established by recent patent-related Supreme Court cases. IPR is working as Congress intended by allowing the PTO to fully assess patents and correct mistakes without litigation, HTIA General Counsel John Thorne said: “This vital mechanism along with recent unanimous Supreme Court rulings, such as the Alice decision (see 1804180073), apply to invalid patents that never should have been issued in the first place and are the primary fuel for abuse of the patent system.”