intellectual property law

A federal judge has approved the National Football League's $50 million settlement with players who contended their rights to publicity were violated by NFL marketing. Bloomberg Businessweek reported U.S. District Judge Paul A. Magnuson opined "the chances of the lawsuit’s succeeding are 'slim at best,' ... calling the settlement a remarkable victory for the class as a whole." Another part of the settlement is the creation of an agency to handle the licensing of ex-players' publicity rights.

With new patent reform legislation introduced in the House of Representatives, Corporate Counsel asks if patent reform should be left to the judiciary, not Congress. But the judiciary may be moving faster anyway: "Most of the key features of the anti-patent troll bill introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, dubbed the 'Innovation Act of 2013', could actually end up duplicating moves made by the judiciary, including two decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure," according to Corporate Counsel. Goodlatte's bill would allow for shifting reasonable attorney fees from defendants to patent trolls whose "principal business model is to assert patents as their main source of revenue," but the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up two cases involving patent-case fee-shifting, Corporate Consel also reported.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a challenge to a "patent troll" who says it invented podcasting, GigaOm reports. According to EFF's petition for inter partes review, patent owner Personal Audio says it invented podcasting in 1996, but EFF says "distributing episodes of media content on the Internet--had been known for at least three years at that point." Read the full petition here: https://www.eff.org/document/podcasting-petition-inter-partes-review

Despite ongoing negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Rights Organization, no international legal protection has yet been worked out to protect cultural heritage like traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expression, Indonesia's Antara News reports. Cultural heritage is left unprotected by intellectual property law.