The issue of orphan works has made its way back to Washington’s attention. The House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property held a hearing March 13^th to gather some follow-up testimony from a small group of rightsholder and content user representatives before reintroducing legislation to address the problem of using orphan works without authorization. Orphan works are those copyrighted works for which no rightsholder can be identified or located.

Subcommittee chairman Howard Berman made it quite clear that he intends to introduce new orphan works legislation shortly and would like to receive the cooperation of interested parties such as those who gave testimony on March 13. It is likely the new bill will look very similar to The Orphan Works Act of 2006, which was proposed and received substantial bipartisan support, but was never enacted, in the last Congress.

Given concerns previously expressed by some visual artist groups, the IP Subcommittee will probably make a few revisions to the language. Photographers, textile designers and graphic designers have argued that, unlike written content, their materials usually do not contain rightsholder information through no fault of the applicable rightsholders, and therefore orphan works legislation must address their unique infringement challenges.

Since this is an election year, and re-election campaigns will be in full swing by late summer, new orphan works legislation will probably be fast-tracked to reach the floor of the House by mid-May.

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A U.S. district court judge in New York has denied Viacom’s motion to seek punitive damages in its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube and parent company Google. Judge Louis Stanton issued his ruling on March 7^th, stating that U.S. copyright law does not accommodate punitive damages in a copyright infringement case.

Under copyright law, Viacom will still be able to seek statutory damages. The programming giant filed an infringement suit against YouTube and Google in March 2007, claiming about 160,000 video clips from Viacom programs were posted on YouTube without permission and compensation. Google claims that its actions are covered by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Last month, a federal judge granted Google’s request for more time to hand over documents in the case. The deadline was extended to May.

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The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has released its annual assessment of the state of large-scale copyright violations worldwide and their effects on U.S. copyright industries. The IIPA’s Special 301 review to the U.S. Trade Representative estimates that piracy in 51 countries cost U.S. copyright industries more than $18 billion in 2007.

The review shows a hike in estimated losses for three out of the five industries represented by the IIPA—music, business and entertainment software. IIPA member, the Association of American Publishers showed a $30 million drop in piracy losses compared to the prior year. The AAP reported some progress in its work with government officials in a number of Asian countries to tackle unauthorized commercial-scale copying and printing of textbooks and journals.

Interestingly, the IIPA review did not include loss estimates for the motion picture industry. Last month, the Motional Picture Association of America announced that their 2005 commissioned study on piracy significantly overshot estimated losses from peer-to-peer file sharing by college students.

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