By a voice vote June 16, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Commercial Felony Streaming Act (S. 978), which would make it a felony to stream copyrighted works without authorization.

Section 506(a)(1)(C) of the Copyright Act currently identifies criminal copyright infringement “by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public.” While that statutory text captures downloading and uploading files containing unauthorized content, such as with peer-to-peer music sharing, it is debatable whether real-time streaming of that same content is subject to the provision as a distribution, or whether it is a performance and thus not subject to criminal penalties.

Introduced in May (82 PTCJ 72, 5/20/11), S. 978 would amend 17 U.S.C. § 506(a)(1)(C) by adding “public performance,” to make it clear that streaming is treated no differently from other illegal computer-based transfers of copyrighted material. S. 978 would also carve out a new criminal penalty for streaming under 18 U.S.C. §2319 by setting a prison term of up to five years for “10 or more public performances” that either provide $2,500 value to the infringer or represent $5,000 in market value.

A vote on the bill was postponed last week, as a quorum could not be met at panel’s June 9 markup session…

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A common defense to claims of inducement of patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b) is that the accused infringer did not know of the patent and so could not have intended to induce infringement. That defense was put in jeopardy earlier this year when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that actual knowledge of a patent was not required to…

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On Jan. 4, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned a district court’s award of judgment as a matter of law that Microsoft Corp. was not liable for infringement of a patent on…

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Google Inc. announced Dec. 2 on its public policy blog that it will be making changes over the next few months to develop new ways to better address copyright infringement and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice and…

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There is a war online. Two very different ideologies are battling for control of information. On one side are those looking to regulate how information is distributed; on the other are…

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Operators of a Canadian website, on which an anonymous user posted a copyrighted news article that is the subject of one of a rapidly expanding number of recent lawsuits filed by Righthaven LLC, must defend the case in Nevada, the U.S. District Court for the…

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Several recent cases—principally DSU Medical Corp. v. JMS Co.—have attempted to clarify the standard for proving inducement of patent infringement. These cases, however, have also raised additional questions leaving…

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The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (S. 3804), introduced Sept. 20 by Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), would take an aggressive and needed stand against online piracy, a…

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The ease of distribution of content on the internet has posed a series of difficulties for the newspaper industry, whose works are among the…

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A Russian company may challenge another company’s claim of ownership of the “Stolichnaya” marks for spirits as a district court improperly conflated incontestability of the mark with the…

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