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By Bloomberg

The Internet Association, a Washington-based trade group of Internet companies, said a proposal to remove copyright jurisdiction from the U.S. Library of Congress and set up an independent federal agency may be premature.

Chief Executive Officer Michael Beckerman said in a statement that “wholesale changes” must be made to the office before it’s spun off.

He suggested the office should represent “all stakeholders through the incorporation of policies that facilitate consumers’ access to content, encourage innovation, and protect content- creators.”

He was responding to the Copyright Office for the Digital Economy Act, draft legislation released June 4 by U.S. Representatives Judy Chu, a California Democrat, and Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican.

The measure would move the copyright office into a new building and allow the office to deliver all communications to Congress free of executive-office review. The president would appoint a director to a 10-year term, with the appointment made upon the advice of a bipartisan commission representing both houses of Congress. The appointment would be subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

Present staff and copyright-royalty judges would be carried over to the new agency, according to the bill.

Beckerman said his organization would “look forward” to working with Congress on modernization of the Copyright Office.

Among the members of the Internet Association are Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Twitter Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Facebook Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc.

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Patents

Google Patents Use of Drones for Emergency Medical Support

Google Inc., creator of the world’s most-used search engine, received a patent on the use of drones to provide emergency medical service.

Patent 9,051,043, issued June 9, covers the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to provide emergency medical support. Google said the vehicles would be configured to provide support for a number of different situations.

A fleet of vehicles could be distributed within a city or other geographic area and configured for communication with remote devices like mobile phones, Google said. Medical support could be requested by a person in need of help or by others, Google said.

The drones could help a person who’s choking, Google said. They could aid a person in cardiac arrest or suffering from trauma. An illustrative medical support system could be configured so that the appropriate drone would be sent as needed.

Mountain View, California-based Google applied for the patent in December 2012, with the assistance of McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP of Chicago.

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Trade Secrets/Industrial Espionage

Kentucky Downs Seeks Dismissal of Amtote Trade Secrets Case

Kentucky Downs LLC, a Thoroughbred horse-racing track on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, sought the dismissal of a trade- secrets case related to technologies used for betting on historical races.

Amtote International Inc. of Hunt Valley, Maryland, filed the suit in federal court in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The Maryland company claimed trade secrets used in its pari-mutuel betting system were misappropriated and incorporated into the Encore system at the Kentucky track.

Kentucky Downs denied the allegations. It said in court filings that Amtote’s claim that information was shared improperly or misappropriated “is based solely on its speculation” that the Encore system couldn’t have been developed without the Maryland company’s trade secrets.

Amtote’s claims didn’t create any inference that “cross the line from ‘possibility’ to ‘plausibility’ based on the facts in issue,” Kentucky Downs said in a filing.

Amtote’s response to the racetrack’s request to dismiss the case is due Monday. The court has granted Amtote’s request to seal a number of documents in the suit.

The case is Amtote International Inc. v. Kentucky Downs LLC, 1:15-cv-00046, U.S. District Court, Western District of Kentucky (Bowling Green).

Trademark

Agave Loco Says ‘Lemonchatta’ Wine Infringes ‘Rumchata’ Marks

Agave Loco LLC, maker of the Rumchata horchata-based alcoholic beverage, sued a California wine company for trademark infringement.

Vernon Hill, Illinois-based Agave Loco accused Cheers Wine & Spirits LLC of infringing the “Rumchata” mark. The Illinois company objects to the Lemonchatta sparking muscat wine imported from Italy and sold by Cheers.

The suit, filed June 9 in federal court in Chicago, comes in the wake of opposition Agave Loco brought to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in an effort to derail Cheers’s October 2013 application to register “Lemonchatta” as a trademark.

Agave Loco said the public is likely to be confused by the name similarity. It claims that Cheers chose that name for its imported sparkling wine product “in order to exploit and trade off the goodwill and popularity of the ‘chata’ marks.”

In its answer filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Cheers said the two companies’ products “are not even remotely related and any allegation of confusing similarity is trademark misuse and bullying.”

The “chata” suffix on the Agave Loco product “is merely an abbreviation of horchata,” which doesn’t merit trademark protection because “it is generic and merely descriptive,” Cheers said.

Agave Loco asked the court to bar Cheers’s use of any mark consisting of a descriptive term followed by either “chata” or “chatta.” The company seeks awards of money damages, including profits derived from the sale of the allegedly infringing products, as well as attorney fees and ligation costs.

The case is Agave Loco LLC v. Cheers Wine & Spirits LLC, 1:15-cv-05060, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).