The Roku Channel infringes three patents on internet search methods and digital compression schemes, including two originally assigned to Philips in the Netherlands in 2003 and 2005, alleged patent owner Uniloc in a complaint (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court in Austin. The “inventive solution” of one of the Philips patents (No. 6,519,005, granted February 2003) on motion-coding an uncompressed digital video data stream made possible digital-video encoding that was “simpler, faster, and less expensive” than previously available technology, said the complaint. The other Philips patent (No. 6,895,118, granted May 2005) on methods of coding digital images based on “error concealment” was a forerunner to MPEG-4 and other super-efficient compression schemes that reduced the amount of data required to send a video stream by “intentionally dropping certain image blocks, and then concealing the lost blocks through the use of spatial interpolation,” it said. The Roku Channel uses methods “for coding a digital image comprising macroblocks in a binary data stream,” in violation of the patent, it said. Philips didn’t comment Friday on how Uniloc came to own the patents. A Roku spokesperson declined comment Friday.

Tela Innovations is seeking a ban on imports of integrated circuits and the consumer electronics products that contain them because they infringe four of its U.S. patents, said the company in a Trade Act Section 337 complaint (login required) filed Dec. 19 with the International Trade Commission. Several companies, including Acer, Asus, Lenovo and Micro-Star, are copying its patented layout optimization technology for ICs and incorporating those chips into downstream products, said the complaint. Tela seeks a limited exclusion order banning imports of the infringing merchandise, and cease and desist orders against the companies involved, it said. The ITC seeks comments on the complaint by Jan. 4, said a Federal Register notice published Thursday.

The Patent and Trademark Office remains in “normal operating status” during the federal government shutdown, said the agency’s website. PTO has access to “prior-year fee collections,” which will enable it to continue normal operations for a “few weeks,” it said. If that money dries up before the shutdown ends, PTO would need to cease operations, though “a small staff would continue to work to accept new applications and maintain IT infrastructure,” it said.

Petitions to participate in the process for determining distribution of digital audio recording technology royalty fees for 2007-11 Sound Recordings Funds are due Jan. 25, the Copyright Royalty Board said Wednesday.

Samsung applied to register the trademark Samsung Blockchain Wallet as a cryptocurrency wallet app for future Galaxy smartphones and tablets, Dec. 20 at the Patent and Trademark Office, agency records show. A similar application was filed three days earlier with U.K. trademark authorities, the application shows. Samsung didn’t comment Wednesday.

The G7 ThinQ smartphone is among LG mobile devices, home electronics products and smart appliances infringing eight wireless and communications-technology patents, alleged a Bell Northern Research complaint (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Diego. BNR, formed in 2017, is “successor in interest” to a “key portfolio” of IP developed at Agere, Broadcom, LSI, Renesas and others, it said. Since the G7 is advertised as being compliant with the “beamforming portions” of the 802.11ac wireless standard, the phone “contains modules operable to compute one or more channel estimate matrices from signals received from a base station,” infringing U.S. patent 7,957,450, granted in June 2011 and assigned to Broadcom, it said. BNR executives met top LG officials in Seoul at least three times in the past year, including as recently as Nov. 30, to give a “detailed presentation” of the infringement, yet LG's bad practices continued, it said. LG didn’t comment.

The Copyright Office requested comment on designation of the Music Modernization Act’s (see 1810160023) mechanical licensing collective (MLC). Initial comments are due March 21, replies April 22, the CO said Friday. The new law establishes a new blanket license for digital music providers offering downloads and interactive streaming. The MLC will develop and maintain a public database for musical works and sound recordings.

The Copyright Royalty Board's rule Wednesday sets January 2018-December 2027 royalty rates for sound recording transmission by pre-existing subscription services and satellite radio: 7.5 percent of gross revenue for pre-existing subscription services and 15.5 percent of gross revenue for satellite radio.

Though encrypting data is “relatively simple” using established “mechanisms,” unlocking encrypted data “in the recovery environment is often difficult and sometimes not possible using current techniques,” said a Microsoft patent application published Thursday at the Patent and Trademark Office. Application 20180357412, filed Aug. 21 and naming six Microsoft inventors, describes techniques to “facilitate” the “secure” unlocking and recovery of encrypted data. A consumer device can use “credentials” associated with an authorized user to obtain a “recovery password to unlock keys for interpreting the encrypted volumes,” it said: The device can use a shortened recovery password “in conjunction with anti-hammering capabilities of a Trusted Platform Module in order to unlock keys for interpreting the encrypted volumes.” Friday, the company didn’t comment.

Amazon Web Services stole three Kove inventions to become the world’s first large-scale vendor of “economical cloud infrastructure and services,” alleged a Wednesday complaint (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in Chicago. AWS' access to the cloud “without having to set up their own servers, software, and functionality” on the wide "scope and scale was made possible through infringement of Kove’s patents,” said Kove. The patent theft paved the way for AWS “to become what is believed to be Amazon’s largest profit center,” it said. Kove is a “small, innovative product company competing in a field of behemoths,” including AWS, it said. Respect for Kove’s IP, “as the law requires, is essential to fair competition,” it said. Kove’s inventors developed the “breakthrough technology” for enabling “high-performance, hyper-scalable” cloud storage years before the commercial “advent” of the cloud, it said. Kove’s technology “became essential to AWS as the volume of data stored on its cloud grew exponentially and its cloud storage business faced limitations on the ability to store and retrieve massive amounts of data,” it said. "We don’t comment on active litigation," emailed Amazon spokesperson Angie Quennell Thursday.