War of the Worlds sequel sets 2017 publication date; BBC News, 12/4/15

BBC News; War of the Worlds sequel sets 2017 publication date:

"A sequel to HG Wells's The War of the Worlds is to be published in 2017 when the copyright on the original expires.

Written by Stephen Baxter, The Massacre of Mankind will see the Martians from Wells's story invading Earth once more, having learned from the mistakes they made first time around.

Gollancz will publish the sequel in hardback and eBook on 19 January 2017.

The copyright on the original, which was published in book form in 1898, lasts until 31 December 2016."

Hong Kong Copyright Law To Be Fiercely Debated; Variety, 12/7/15

Patrick Frater, Variety; Hong Kong Copyright Law To Be Fiercely Debated:

"Hong Kong’s legislature is Wednesday to debate a bill that seeks to make the territory’s copyright laws appropriate for the Internet age.

The government seems certain to win the vote in the Legislative Council (LegCo), but the bill is likely to be fiercely contested and extra security may be drafted outside the LegCo building.

Opponents say that the bill reinforces the position of business and copyright owners, but stifles freedom of speech.

In particular, they say that the proposed law does not take enough account of user-generated-content and that it will narrow the scope for sampling of copyright works for parody."

China vows copyright protection for online news media; Reuters, 12/4/15

Reuters; China vows copyright protection for online news media:

"China will crack down on illegal reproduction of online news, the country's media watchdog said, days after an influential Chinese news magazine complained publicly about what it described as unauthorized republishing of its stories.

China's government has long vowed to rein in intellectual property infringement from knock-off goods to the theft of commercial secrets. But violations remain rampant.

While the republishing of other news outlets' articles is common practice in China, some companies in the country's increasingly competitive media industry have become more vocal about what they say is unauthorized use of original content."

[Post-Public Draft 2016-2020 Strategic Plan] Positioning the United States Copyright Office for the Future: Strategic Plan 2016-2020; U.S. Copyright Office, December 2015

[Post-Public Draft 2016-2020 Strategic Plan] Positioning the United States Copyright Office for the Future: Strategic Plan 2016-2020:

[Excerpt]"This Strategic Plan organizes and prioritizes objectives for the next five years. It draws on four years of internal evaluations and public input — that is, two initial years of fact-findings, public inquiries, and special projects, and two additional years of public roundtables, reports, and Congressional hearings. These initiatives, announced in October 2011, coincided with government-mandated budget cuts as well as staff reductions and backlogs. We seized these challenges, however, as an opportunity to examine inefficiencies, dismantle dated practices, and propose new paradigms. Much of this exciting work and our accomplishments to date are described in the back of this Plan. We also introduce here a revised mission statement that better captures our statutory mandate.

Here is my vision for a modern Copyright Office:

Customers should be able to transact with the Office easily, quickly, and from anywhere at any time, using mobile technologies and any number of consumer-friendly platforms and devices to secure rights or access data. They should have at their fingertips an integrated life-cycle of copyright information — not only the date on which a work was created, published or fell into the public domain, but also all of the authors, owners, licensees, derivative uses, rights, and permission information that are both relevant to the marketplace and invaluable to meaningful research. The Office should have businessto-business capabilities that both leverage and support private sector activities, while ensuring and facilitating transparency and fairness.

Although technology improvements are an essential part of the future, true modernization involves much more than making incremental upgrades to hardware or software. It requires re-envisioning almost all of the Copyright Office’s services, including how customers register claims, submit deposits, record documents, share data, and access expert resources, and it requires meeting the diverse needs of individual authors, entrepreneurs, the user community, and the general public.

Maria A. Pallante

United States Register of Copyrights,

Director, U.S. Copyright Office

Judge: Company must pay $684k for suing Life360 in “exceptionally weak” patent case; ArsTechnica.com, 12/2/15

Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica.com; Judge: Company must pay $684k for suing Life360 in “exceptionally weak” patent case:

"Family networking service Life360 won a patent trial earlier this year against a Florida company called Advanced Ground Information Systems (AGIS) that sued it for patent infringement. Now it has won a significant chunk of its legal fees for fighting the case.

Yesterday, US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks ordered AGIS to pay Life360 the sum of $684,190.25. That amount represents the legal fees paid from November 21, 2014, when Middlebrooks issued a claim construction order, through the end of the trial on March 13, 2015."

Sharing of television news clips hangs in the fair-use balance; ArsTechnica.com, 12/2/15

David Kravets, ArsTechnica.com; Sharing of television news clips hangs in the fair-use balance:

"Fox News is winning more than just the news network ratings wars. It's also winning the battle against copyright's fair use doctrine.

In August, a federal judge sided (PDF) with the news station's copyright-infringement lawsuit against a television and radio clipping service known as TVEyes, which charges as much as $500 a month for its service. A New York federal judge ruled that wanton sharing, time searching, and downloading of Fox News' news segments is not fair use. Then in November, US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled TVEyes could not allow its clients—like the White House, American Red Cross, members of Congress, and others—to download Fox News clips. The judge also ordered TVEyes to block users from searching Fox News clips and from allowing them to share them on social media...

All of this begs the question of what is fair use. It's complicated, and there is no bright-line rule."

COPYRIGHT OFFICE NEEDS MORE TECH AND DATA EXPERTS; NextGov.com, 12/2/15

Hallie Golden, NextGov.com; COPYRIGHT OFFICE NEEDS MORE TECH AND DATA EXPERTS:

"To keep pace with the demands of the digital age, the U.S. Copyright Office needs fewer file clerks and more techies, Maria Pallante, the office's director, told lawmakers on Wednesday.

“It used to be catalogers, now it needs to be technology and data [experts],” Pallante described the agency’s hiring needs. “I don’t know how we can administer the law without it.”

Every year, the Copyright Office's staff examines and register hundreds of thousands of copyright claims submitted by book authors, music artists, software manufacturers and other creators of intellectual property.

The office needs to restructure its workforce, Pallante told members of the Committee on House Administration during a hearing on the office’s tech plans. The office would like to eventually “morph” about a third of its staff -- 150 employees -- into tech and data experts, she said.

“These experts should not merely be assigned or on-call from another part of the agency, but rather be integrated into the copyright office mission where they can work side by side with legal and business experts,” she said."