Posts Tagged: "Karyn Temple"

Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) sent a letter to Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden and Register of Copyrights Karyn Temple on Tuesday, August 27, asking that they help him to “speed up the modernization process” for the U.S. Copyright Office. Tillis posed seven pointed questions to Hayden and Temple, which in part implied that their agencies’ reliance on legacy contractors and internal staff to implement the pending IT updates could be the source of proposed timelines that Tillis characterized as “unnecessarily long in the age of agile IT.”

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property convened an oversight hearing of the U.S. Copyright Office featuring testimony from Karyn Temple, the Register of Copyrights and Director of the Copyright Office. Much of the hearing focused on the Office’s efforts to modernize its information technology infrastructure and business processes, although implementation of the recently passed Music Modernization Act (MMA) and new forms of digital piracy were also discussed.

Every single day, millions of Americans enjoy the benefits of a robust copyright system that has been responsibly guided and carefully enacted by the U.S. Congress over the past two centuries.  Indeed, only just recently, Congress updated the incredibly complex music provisions of the law, and we continue to have hearings on issues that show the deep regard of this Nation when it comes to incentivizing music, movies, books and art—works that speak to our values and progress as a Nation.  By its very design, the copyright law encourages artists big and small, ultimately fueling the public domain for ages to come. And copyright is an economic powerhouse. According to the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) 2018 report Copyright Industries in the U.S. Economy, copyright intensive industries contribute $1.3 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product, representing almost 7% of the entire economy. These industries also employ close to 5.7 million American workers with an annual average salary of almost $100,000.  In a word, copyright is essential—both to American public life and the broader American innovation economy. Unfortunately, Congress has fallen behind in one crucial aspect of the copyright system: ensuring that the American people have a nimble, state-of-the-art, and efficient Copyright Office at their service.  

On October 11, the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act (MMA) was enacted into law after passing both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The bill was drafted in order to modernize U.S. copyright law as it relates to the licensing of copyright protected music for use in digital streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music. Such digital service providers (DSPs) may obtain a new kind of license created by the law, known as a blanket license, which covers the distribution of all musical works available for compulsory licensing. DSPs may then make these works available to consumers through covered activities, such as delivering digital phonorecords of musical works available in the form of a permanent download, a limited download or as an interactive stream.In short, the blanket license under the MMA allows Spotify and others to offer streaming music services without having to negotiate licenses with copyright-owning entities, including recording studios and songwriters. Instead, these streaming services would obtain a blanket license from the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), another new feature of the MMA. The MLC is a non-profit entity responsible for administering blanket licenses to DSPs, collecting and distributing royalties, enabling copyright owners to claim ownership of musical works and administering a process by which royalties for works with unidentified owners are equitably distributed to known copyright owners. The statutory language of the MMA directs the Register of Copyrights to designate the membership of the MLC within 270 days of enactment of the law. Given the date on which the MMA was enacted, this would indicate that July 8 of this year is the deadline for Register of Copyrights Karyn Temple to designate the MLC that would start administering blanket licenses at the beginning of 2021. There are two groups that have proposed their own membership of the MLC to the Copyright Office: a coalition of major publishers from the music industry, including the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), Songwriters of North America (SONA) and Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI); and the American Music Licensing Collective (AMLC), a collection of songwriters, musicians, tech developers and executives from smaller rights organizations and publishers within the music industry.

This week in other IP news, recently released data shows that worldwide revenues for music copyright exceeded $28 billion in 2017, up $2 billion over 2016; reports surface about the  “reverse patent trolling” issue in China; Google retains Williams & Connolly for Supreme Court battle with Oracle despite Shanmugam exit; the Copyright Office holds roundtable discussions on detecting online copyright infringement; Twitter takes down a tweet from President Donald Trump after a copyright complaint; “KINKEDIN” trademark for computer dating site successfully opposed in the UK by LinkedIn; EU antitrust regulators are petitioned to look into Nokia patent licensing practices; and loss of patent exclusivity leads to major job cuts at Gilead Sciences. 

This week in Other Barks & Bites: Karyn Temple is appointed Register of Copyrights; the International Trade Commission recommends excluding certain iPhone models for infringing Qualcomm patent claims; the EU approves new copyright rules which will affect online media platforms; Senators Tillis and Coons move forward with stakeholder discussions on a legislative fix to Section 101 of patent law; Peloton responds to copyright infringement suit by dropping online cycling classes; Amazon adds nearly 1,000 jobs in Austin, TX; the District of Delaware tosses out willful infringement claims against Intel; and Oracle files opposition asking Supreme Court to deny a petition for writ filed by Google.

On March 14, Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE), respectively the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, sent a letter addressed to Karyn Temple, Acting Register of Copyrights at the U.S. Copyright Office expressing concerns that Tillis and Coons share about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC. As the letter from Sens. Tillis and Coons notes, it takes an average of about six months for the Copyright Office to fully process registration applications. Given that the Supreme Court has now ruled that these applications must be fully processed prior to the filing of a suit, Senators Tillis and Coons said the real impact of the Fourth Estate decision “will be the extended unlawful exploitation of a copyright owner’s intellectual property.”