The Copyright Office issued a final rule Thursday for transition period cumulative reporting and royalty transfers to the mechanical licensing collective (see 2012310019). The rule requires digital music providers to “submit cumulative statements of account to the mechanical licensing collective at the conclusion of the statutory transition period in order to be eligible for the statutory limitation on liability for prior unlicensed uses of musical works.” The rule creates a “mechanism for digital music providers to rely upon royalty input estimations and make subsequent adjustments once the inputs are finalized.”

Deny the patent infringement investigation SkyBell and EyeTalk365 seek on video doorbells and IP cameras from Vivint, SimpliSafe and Arlo Technologies because the seven communications and monitoring systems patents are “invalid,” commented SimpliSafe and Arlo (login required) in International Trade Commission docket 337-3517. Tuesday was the deadline for comments. Two of the three proposed respondents argued for the case to be thrown out or decided expeditiously. No Vivint filing was posted Wednesday. The complainants didn’t respond to questions.

Neodron settled with 10 major consumer tech brands, ending “high profile legal actions concerning allegations of patent infringement against those companies,” said the technology licensor Tuesday. Neodron didn't name the companies, but filed Tariff Act Section 337 complaints at the International Trade Commission since 2019 against Amazon, Apple, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung and Sony, all seeking import bans against their devices for allegedly infringing four touch sensor patents.

Ericsson owns a “valuable portfolio” of patents used globally in cellular handsets, tablets, TVs and “many other electrical devices,” and a wide variety of Samsung smart TVs and smartphones, including the new Galaxy S20+5G flagship phone, infringe four of them, alleged a New Year’s Day complaint (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas. The oldest of the asserted patents (6,879,849) dates to April 2005 and describes an “in-built antenna” for mobile communications devices. The Galaxy S20+5G includes an “antenna pattern” formed of conductive metal located on a “specified planar surface” of a main printed circuit board, next to the phone’s millimeter-wave 5G circuitry, in violation of the patent, said Ericsson. The most recent patent (9,313,178) was granted in April 2016 for a method and system for securing over-the-top live video delivery. Samsung smart TVs and smartphones that support Google’s Widevine digital rights management system “perform the step of detecting content encryption key rotation boundaries between periods of use of different content encryption keys in decrypting retrieved content,” said the complaint. The manner in which the products do so violates the patent, it said. Ericsson seeks a judgment that Samsung’s infringement is “willful,” plus punitive and compensatory damages “in no event less than a reasonable royalty,” it said. Samsung didn’t respond to questions Monday.

The Copyright Office issued an interim rule prescribing information categories for a public musical works database for the Music Modernization Act (see 1901170037), the CO announced Thursday. The interim rule, effective Feb. 16, establishes rules on “usability, interoperability, and usage restrictions of the database” and requires the mechanical licensing collective to “disclose certain categories of information in its statutorily-required annual reports to ensure transparency of the collective itself and specifies requirements related to an abbreviated, one-time written public update in December 2021 regarding the MLC’s operations.”

Sonos landed a U.S. patent Tuesday for a tunable “music discovery dial” on a user's “command device” by emulating the functionality of an old-fashioned radio, says the patent (10,877,726), based on a May 18 application. For users who might want to “stumble across something that they would not normally listen to,” modern graphical user interfaces or voice commands may lead users “to listen to the same music over and over,” it says. The invented command device may include a dial to facilitate tuning to different streaming audio channels, “similar to how rotating the frequency dial of a radio tunes the radio to different stations,” it says. Unlike the dial on a traditional radio, the command device can be personalized via a user’s “playback history,” says the patent. “Using such history, streaming audio channels can be configured to include music that is unexpected or new for a particular user, rather than just generally out-of-the-mainstream.” Sonos didn't comment on commercialization plans.

WiLan's Xueshan Technologies subsidiary bought a second portfolio of about 2,000 patents from MediaTek, WiLan said Wednesday. Acquired patents involve power management and RF ICs, embedded and near-field communication, microcontrollers and image processors, it said. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

Samsung’s South Korean parent company applied last week to register “Samsung Micro Color” as a U.K. and U.S. trademark for TVs, digital signage display panels and computer monitors, Patent and Trademark Office records show. Samsung began preorders for its 110-inch 4K MicroLED display, which will be available for the first time in traditional TV form globally in Q1. Samsung said the self-emissive display renders 100% of the DCI and Adobe RGB color gamut and accurately delivers wide color gamut images taken with high-end digital single-lens reflex cameras, but it didn’t use Samsung Micro Color as a descriptor (see 2012110015).

The Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security added more than 60 companies, including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China’s largest chipmaker, to the entity list “to protect U.S. national security,” said BIS Friday. This stems from China’s “military-civil fusion doctrine” and evidence of collaboration between SMIC and “entities of concern in the Chinese military industrial complex,” it said. SMIC denied the allegations, saying it supplies products and services only for “civilian end users” (see 2011120011). The company didn't comment Friday. The new restriction “limits SMIC's ability to acquire certain U.S. technology by requiring U.S. exporters to apply for a license to sell to the company,” said BIS. “Items uniquely required to produce semiconductors at advanced technology nodes -- 10 nanometers or below -- will be subject to a presumption of denial.” China urges the U.S. “to stop its wrong behavior of oppression of foreign companies,” said a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Friday in anticipation of the BIS action. “China will continue to take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies.”

HBO Max will be available via the Roku platform starting Thursday, with users able to subscribe directly on their Roku devices, Roku said Wednesday.