Around the IP Blogs!

As the January blues have seriously started to kick in, the IPKat is in search of some excitement around the IP blogland. Stay warm and cozy, Kat friends!

IPKat doesn’t mind a duvet day!

The 1709 Blog discusses the proposed Music Modernization Act in the U.S., directed to an overhaul of the system of royalty arrangements for mechanical licenses. This piece of legislation proposes a mechanism, under which digital services would fund a Mechanical Licensing Collective, and, in turn, be granted blanket mechanical licences for interactive streaming or digital downloads of musical works.  Although paid for by the digital services, the new collecting society would be run by music publishers and (self-published) songwriters. The law would also change the way the statutory boards and courts that regulate US collective licensing are organised; the selection method for judges to rate courts; and the criteria employed when setting rates that would be altered to reflect market realities.

JIPLP looks at the CJEU’s decision in C-265/16, VCAST, which analyses the intersection of private copying and communication to the public in the context of the cloud. The Court held that a service enabling private individuals to receive free-to-air television content and directly record it onto a personal cloud storage space was unlawful. Even though the Court did not address the applicability of the private copying exception to cloud services in general, it did not foreclose its application of this exception. The exception should arguably apply to copies made by individual customers of the service in cases where the work is lawfully made available or the cloud service is predominantly characterised by the reproduction function.

Over at the Kluwer Patent Blog, the patent light shines onto the IP community’s request for governmental action to ensure continuity and certainty of IP law in the context of Brexit and to prevent disruption both to IP providers and its users. The document of the IP organisations, inter alia, seeks UK’s continued intention to stay in the UPC and to abide by the terms of the UPCA, to retain one of the sections of the Central Division in London, and to ensure continued involvement of UK national judges and participation of legal professionals qualified and based in the UK in all parts of the Court’s procedures.

IP Draughts reviews the process by which this document was drafted and also comments on its substantive contents. It is anticipated that many more such communications from the IP industry stakeholders are on the way, aiming to enlighten governmental officials on the issues that Brexit raises for IP law and policy.

The IPKat snuggles in a trade mark blanket to find some celebratory news from WIPO and EUIPO as announced on Marques.The ROMARIN, Madrid e-Alert and Madrid Realtime Status tools have all been discontinued by WIPO as of the 1^st of January 2018, leaving Madrid Monitor the only tool for tracking the status of international trade mark applications and registrations under the Madrid System. The first day of this year also marks the effective date for the 11th edition of the Nice Classification. EUIPO bids farewell to the good old fax as a method for filing and renewing a EUTM.

Image credits: Aymeric Kaczmarski