Cross-posted from the Mister Copyright blog.

This month, Congress introduced a bill that would establish a long-discussed small claims court for copyright disputes. The legislation comes after a House Judiciary Committee proposal based on a four-year review of the US Copyright system and a 2013 report by the Copyright Office that recommended “the creation of an alternative forum that will enable copyright owners to pursue small infringement matters and related claims arising under the Copyright Act.” Read more

Last month, the International Trade Administration (ITA)—an agency in the US Department of Commerce that measures and promotes the export of nonagricultural services and goods—released its 2017 Top Markets Report, Media and Entertainment Sector Snapshot. The report provides updates on the steady growth of the US media and entertainment (M&E) sector, which includes the core copyright industries: books, newspapers, periodicals, motion pictures, TV production, recorded music, radio and television broadcasting, video games, and software. Read more

Venture capital investment in the United States has declined steadily for years, as investors abandon an uncertain domestic climate for more reliable opportunities in foreign countries. In a report on the current state of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the National Venture Capital Association emphasizes the extreme decline in the US share of global venture capital in the last twenty years, highlighting a drop from 83% of global share in 1996 to just 54% in 2015. Read more

No just and coherent legal system would permit an administrative body to invalidate a property right that a court had previously upheld. Unfortunately, exactly that result was just endorsed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Novartis AG v Noven Pharm., Read more

44 law, economics, and business professors filed an amicus brief yesterday in support of Lexmark International in its Supreme Court case against Impression Products. The professors argue that although patent exhaustion provides the baseline rule for sales of a patented product by a patent owner, parties should be free to contract around the baseline rule in their business dealings. Read more

Last week, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) released a proposed revision to the section of the Patent Act that defines the subject matter eligible for patenting.  I discussed the importance of the proposal, noting that there have been several calls for legislative solutions to overly restrictive understanding of what inventions are eligible for patents. Read more

On January 31, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) released a proposed revision to the section of the Patent Act that defines the subject matter eligible for patenting.

IPO’s proposed text for an amended 35 U.S.C. § 101 can be downloaded here. Read more