Goodlatte Open to Some CO Independence, Seeks 'Targets of Opportunity'
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said he and many other House members “believe the Copyright Office should remain in the legislative branch of our government.” During an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators set to have been shown Saturday, he said he is open to separating the CO from the Library of Congress. Some advocates of CO independence have proposed making it an independent congressional agency, while others proposed making it a Department of Commerce office (see 1511180063). Goodlatte said he is exploring whether Congress can give the CO “some greater independence so that we can not only target money to them” but also give the Register of Copyrights “the independence to make some of the decisions” on modernization issues without LOC approval.
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CO modernization remains “very much” a top issue in Judiciary’s Copyright Act review, though the committee is still “looking for targets of opportunity” for possible legislation, Goodlatte said. He said House Judiciary has finished gathering information from stakeholders on copyright issues and is now “trying to look at opportunities within the information we’ve gathered” for a copyright law revamp. House Judiciary did a series of roundtables during the fall with copyright stakeholders in California and Tennessee to follow up on the committee’s earlier copyright hearings (see 1509220055 and 1511100063).
Music licensing is clearly an area where stakeholders believe legislative changes are necessary, and House Judiciary is “looking for opportunities to bring these parties together to talk about rational reforms that are necessary” to ensure copyright law keeps pace with changes in technology, Goodlatte said. “It takes an effort to get people to sit down and think about where they think” technology is trending, he said: Once a copyright revamp is enacted, “it’s going to have to last for a while.”
Goodlatte said he is willing to consider moving forward with narrowly tailored patent bills, since the House Judiciary-cleared Innovation Act (HR-9) hasn't made it to the floor during the 114th Congress. House Judiciary cleared HR-9 in June (see 1506120027). House Judiciary “is aware of and are not opposed to” bills like the Venue Equity and Non-Uniformity Elimination Act (S-2733), though “our preference would be to take” HR-9 “and pass it as a whole,” Goodlatte said: “No decision has been made yet about scheduling that for the floor, so we are open to” acting on narrower bills like S-2733 “in order to do as much as we can in this area.” S-2733 would revamp rules for placement of patent infringement lawsuits in federal courts, requiring at least one of the parties involved in the lawsuit be connected directly to the jurisdiction in which the suit is filed (see 1603180057).