Senator Thom Tillis Seeks Suggestions for Reform of Digital Millenium Copyright Act — Jem Aswad at Variety reports on an open letter sent by North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, who recently won relection against Democratic candidate Cal Cunningham, to stakeholders addressing efforts to reform the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Tillis has held a series of hearings on the law over the past year, and the letter identifies a number of issues in sections 512, 1201, and 1202 of the Copyright Act which may be ripe for reform and seeks input on how to address those issues.
Administration Issues Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property — The U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator this week issued its Joint Strategic Plan for 2020-2022. The plan, which the IPEC is required to release every three years, focuses especially on trade-related efforts to enforce U.S. intellectual property as well as the sale and distribution of counterfeit and pirated goods on e-commerce platforms and other intermediaries.
Mandatory Deposit of Electronic-Only Books — The U.S. Copyright Office this week issued a final rule amending its regulations to make electronic-only books published in the United States subject to the Copyright Act’s mandatory deposit provisions if they are affirmatively demanded by the Office. The final rule largely adopts the language set forth in the Office’s June 2020 notice of proposed rulemaking, with one additional clarification regarding the rule’s applicability to print-on-demand books.
Enda: Kenya’s first home-grown running shoe — From WIPO Magazine: “We work with Kenyan athletes to design running shoes and sell them to runners around the world. Most running shoe companies are based in the United States or Europe. Enda is unique; it’s the only company of its kind in Africa. We are not simply testing or marketing technical running shoes made by others, we are actually making our own shoes. . . . Intellectual property (IP) is king. Without IP rights, we would have no legal means of defending ourselves against copycats or other unscrupulous operators. IP rights enable us to protect Enda’s business interests and grow the company, ensuring that when people buy our shoes, they get an authentic, high-quality product.”
Google Takes Down Repositories That Circumvent its Widevine DRM — “GitHub has removed several repositories that helped to bypass Google’s Widevine DRM, which is used by popular streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon. Google requested the code to be removed as it would violate the DMCA. . . . Google sees the code, which was explicitly published for educational purposes only, as a circumvention tool. As such, it allegedly violates section 1201 of the DMCA, an allegation that was also made against the youtube-dl code last month.”