Posts Tagged: "federal register"

The U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) has announced a new statement of policy on “Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence” that will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow, March 16. The statement comes following several recent cases that have tested the bounds of copyright protection for works generated solely or in part by AI authors. Most recently, the USCO held in a case involving a graphic novel, Zarya of the Dawn, featuring AI-generated images that the copyright registration would be limited to the text of the novel, which was the product of human authorship. The Office there explained that the “the text of the graphic novel ‘as well as the selection, coordination, and arrangement of the Work’s written and visual elements’ are protectable under copyright law” but that the images themselves were not.

Today, the Federal Register published a final interim rule submitted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that will eliminate provisions within the agency’s rules of practice establishing a voluntary program for certifying the completion of continuing legal education (CLE) credits by registered patent practitioners and those granted limited recognition to practice in patent matters before the USPTO. The elimination of the voluntary CLE program follows a series of criticisms raised over the agency’s lack of compliance with federal administrative law statutes meant to objectively quantify the burden of agency rulemaking on stakeholders.

The USPTO recently published a Final Rule setting new fees for trademark filings and TTAB proceedings, which will be effective January 2, 2021. The last time trademark fees were adjusted was about three years ago. The increases range from modest to fairly substantial. To file an application using the TEAS Plus option, the fee has increased from $225 per class to $250 per class, and the processing fee for failing to meet the TEAS Plus requirements has been reduced from $125 per class to $100 per class. However, the fee for TEAS Standard per class has jumped $75, from $275 to $350, which many trademark owners who commented found unreasonable.

On October 20, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a “Request for Comments on Discretion To Institute Trials Before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board” in the Federal Register. In particular, the USPTO is considering the codification or modification of its current policies and practices with respect to instituting trials before the Office under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA). The Office submitted a proposed rulemaking to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) last month with the aim of formalizing recent practices under precedential opinions including Apple Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc; General Plastic Industries Co. Ltd. v. Canon Kabushiki Kaisha; and Becton, Dickinson & Co. v. B. Braun Melsungen AG.

On June 3, the U.S. Copyright Office published a Federal Register notice regarding a study it is initiating to “evaluate the degree to which copyright owners are experiencing infringement by state entities without adequate remedies under state law, as well as the extent to which such infringements appear to be based on intentional or reckless conduct.” The Office requested public input in the form of written comments on or before August 3, 2020 to assist the Office in preparing a report to Congress on the study.

One of the new exemptions for motion pictures includes the expansion of the exemption of TPMs protecting motion picture clips on DVDs, Blu-Rays and streaming services to include fictional films; the prior exemption only protected documentary filmmakers circumventing TPMs on those tech platforms to capture movie clips. Fictional filmmakers are now able to circumvent TPMs on the same platforms where the circumvention is intended to capture a clip for use in parody or where the clip is significant for biographical or historical reasons.

The USPTO recently announced the implementation of the first phase of the Access to Relevant Prior Art (RPA) Initiative. The initiative is being designed to reduce the burden placed upon patent applicants to comply with their duty of disclosure through the use of automated tools which import relevant prior art and other pertinent information into pending U.S. patent applications as quickly as possible.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has published a final rule in the Federal Register changing the claim construction standard applied during inter partes review (IPR), post-grant review (PGR), and covered business method (CBM) review proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). This final rule replaces the broadest reasonable interpretation standard the USPTO has used to interpret claims since AIA administrative trial proceedings came online effective September 16, 2012 with the Phillips standard, which is the same claim construction standard used to construe patent claims in patent infringement litigation in federal district courts.

Last week, on Friday, April 1, 2016, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published a final rules in the Federal Register. These newly minted final rules, which become effective on May 2, 2016, amend the existing trial practice rules pertaining to inter partes review (IPR), post-grant review (PGR), covered business method (CBM) review, and derivation proceedings brought into being by provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA). In a nutshell, these new rules change existing practice by allowing new testimonial evidence to be submitted with a patent owner’s preliminary response, adding a Rule 11-type certification for papers filed in a proceeding, allowing a claim construction approach that emulates the approach used by a district court following Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005) for claims of patents that will expire before entry of a final written decision, and replacing the current page limit with a word count limit for major briefing.