Spotify is facing a second class-action lawsuit claiming the company isn’t obtaining needed mechanical licenses on copyrighted music. Independent musician Melissa Ferrick filed her $200 million suit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles Friday, claiming Spotify has streamed her songs about 1 million times without obtaining a license. Spotify chose to outsource its licensing to the Harry Fox Agency, which has been “ill-equipped to obtain licenses for all of the songs embodied in the phonorecords distributed by Spotify,” Ferrick alleged. “Neither Spotify nor HFA directly licensed or timely issued NOIs for many of the musical compositions embodied in phonorecords that Spotify was reproducing and distributing on a daily basis,” Ferrick said of notices of intent required to be sent to copyright owners before content is used. Spotify is “committed to paying songwriters and publishers every penny,” a spokesman said in a statement Monday. “We are working closely with the National Music Publishers Association to find the best way to correctly pay the royalties we have set aside and we are investing in the resources and technical expertise to build a comprehensive publishing administration system to solve this problem for good.” Ferrick’s suit follows a similar $150 million lawsuit that David Lowery, a songwriter and University of Georgia music business lecturer, filed in December in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Lowery, who leads the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, claimed Spotify is illegally distributing four Cracker songs (see 1512290048).

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said it’s seeking comment on its annual special 301 review process on “notorious” IP markets, which identifies “priority” countries where policies allow copyright infringement and other IP rights violations to occur. USTR’s 2015 annual special 301 report didn’t name any country as a “priority foreign country” for IP rights violations but identified China and India among 13 priority watch list countries. USTR placed 24 other countries on its lower-tier watch list (see 1504300061). Comments on the 2016 special 301 review are due Feb. 5, USTR said in Monday’s Federal Register. Foreign governments will have until Feb. 19 to file comments or notices that they intend to testify at a planned March 1 public hearing on the special 301 review, USTR said. The March 1 hearing is at USTR’s Washington, D.C., offices. USTR said it plans to release its 2016 special 301 report around April 30.

Patent and Trademark Office representatives will discuss two "evolving programs" of its enhanced patent quality initiative -- topic submission for case studies and post-grant outcomes -- during the first patent quality chat webinar of 2016, the PTO said in a news release Wednesday. The webinar is scheduled for Tuesday from noon to 1 p.m., and will feature presentations from Patent Quality Assurance Office Director Anthony Caputa, Patent Legal Administration Office Director Brian Hanlon, Technology Center Director Jack Harvey and Supervisory Patent Examiner Stephen Koziol, the PTO said.

The International Trade Commission is seeking comment by Jan. 12 on Advanced Silicon Technologies' Tariff Act Section 337 complaint for an investigation into patent infringement by imports of computing or graphics systems and vehicles containing them. Advanced Silicon said several companies import automotive in-vehicle infotainment systems that provide drivers with various amenities, such as sending texts or making phone calls, managing and playing audio and video content, and accessing content such as sports scores and weather forecasts, that infringe its patents. The petition requests a limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders banning import and sale of infringing merchandise by BMW, Harman Becker, Nvidia, Texas Instruments and other companies. None of the companies commented Tuesday. Advanced Silicon's ITC complaint, was filed Dec. 28, said the agency in a notice in the Federal Register Monday.

The Copyright Royalty Board published notices in Tuesday’s Federal Register for three new proceedings to set royalty rates for 2018-2022, as expected (see 1601040069). One of the proceedings will set royalties for public digital performances of sound recordings via satellite radio and “preexisting subscription services.” The other proceedings deal with mechanical royalties and royalties for public performances of musical compositions by NPR, PBS affiliates and other noncommercial broadcasters. Petitions to participate in all three proceedings are due Feb. 4.

The Copyright Office “needs to go further” in updating its records system than its current digitization project, by repurposing existing records information “into a more modern, easy-to-use database," said Adobe Associate General Counsel Scott Evans in a Tuesday blog post. “Getting new copyrights registered and finding information about existing copyrights is not easy, and can become a major obstacle for those looking to create and protect their intellectual property without infringing on someone else’s. Given the Copyright Office’s importance to the creative process, the current copyright system does not do justice to the community it serves.” Completely overhauling the CO’s current records system “would save a huge amount of time and money that is currently spent on avoidable legal issues” involving inadvertent misuse of copyrighted material likely caused by difficulties accessing copyright records via the existing CO system, Evans said. If the CO “doesn’t modernize, it could seriously jeopardize future creative leadership because there is no system at this point that works efficiently for the creative community,” he said. “It is also time for Congress to revisit the Copyright Act and make the revisions necessary to bring the U.S. copyright law in line with current technological innovation.”

The Copyright Royalty Board said it’s beginning three new proceedings to set music royalty rights for 2018-2022. One proceeding will deal with public digital performances of sound recordings via satellite radio and “preexisting subscription services” like SiriusXM’s satellite service. The proceeding’s outcome will also apply to cable radio’s “pre-existing subscription services,” CRB said in a draft notice to be published in Tuesday’s Federal Register. The other CRB proceedings will deal with mechanical royalties and royalties for public performances of musical compositions by NPR, PBS affiliates and other noncommercial broadcasters, the CRB said. The mechanical royalties proceeding “is one proceeding where the record labels and the digital music services are actually more or less on the same side -- litigating against the publishing companies and songwriters over how much is paid for the use of the words and music of a particular song,” said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford in a blog post Monday. Assuming the proceedings appear in Tuesday’s Federal Register, interested parties would need to file petitions to participate by Feb. 4, with hearings on the proceedings likely occurring in 2017, Oxenford said.

Securus claimed two victories in recent proceedings with the Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) on patent invalidation filings by Global Tel*Link (GTL), Securus said in a news release Wednesday. The PTAB upheld the validity of Securus' patents -- one for a system of controlling inmate access to a telephone carrier network by using VoIP data packets, and another for methods for processing VoIP calls originating within a prison -- that were challenged by GTL, Securus said. Securus CEO Richard Smith said he's "pleased" the PTAB viewed the "key" patents as being valid. GTL didn't comment.

Two more class-action complaints filed Tuesday against Vizio bring to nine the number of federal lawsuits brought since mid-November accusing the company of violating the Video Privacy Protection Act through the “smart interactivity” viewer-tracking feature on Vizio smart TVs (see 1512060005). The nine complaints, all but two of which were filed in California, allege the feature tracks the content viewers are consuming, links it with their IP addresses and other personally identifiable information and sells the information to marketing and advertising companies without anyone’s knowledge or consent. One of the two Tuesday complaints was filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, in which plaintiff Kathleen Sloan of Concord, California, concedes that “after initial setup,” owners do have the option to turn off the smart interactivity feature “by navigating through the settings menu on their TV” and “toggling” the feature to the “disabled” setting. But the complaint goes into elaborate detail about the “barriers” owners face in trying to opt out of smart interactivity. Among them, “the owner would need to be aware that they have been ‘opted in’ to the program, and no such warning is contained on the product packaging, sales receipt, user manual, or initial setup screen,” the complaint says. And even if the user successfully disables smart interactivity from the settings menu, Vizio and its third-party partners “still have access to all of the data” that the feature previously collected and stored about the owner, it says. Vizio hasn't filed a formal answer to any of the complaints, but lawyers for the company successfully motioned for a deadline extension to mid-February for filing an answer to one of the earliest complaints. Among the reasons, “several related class actions concerning the same subject matter as the instant case” have been filed, and Vizio lawyers are “diligently working to coordinate among the various cases,” the motion said. Vizio representatives didn’t comment.

The Copyright Office said it plans a study assessing the impact and effectiveness of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Section 512, including general operation of Section 512's safe harbor provisions. The CO said Wednesday it's doing the study in response to a recommendation from Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante and a request from House Judiciary Committee ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich. Both Conyers and Pallante said Section 512's operation “poses policy issues that warrant study and analysis,” the CO said in a notice to be published in Thursday's Federal Register. The Department of Commerce also “noted ambiguities in the application of the safe harbor and encouraged service providers and rightsholders to discuss and pursue voluntary improvements,” the CO said. The study also will examine the effectiveness of the current notice-and-takedown process, the counter-notification process and the legal standards that apply under Section 512. The CO said it's seeking public comment on the Section 512 study, with comments due March 21. The CO said it also plans at least one public meeting related to its 512 study. The CO also announced Monday that it's planning a study of DMCA Section 1201, including the CO's current triennial process for granting exemptions to Section 1201's ban on circumvention of technological protection measures (see 1512280030).