IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - April 2017 - 117

ATSC 3.0 family. Unfortunately, there
is nothing publicly available for the
overview standard, A/300; it is dependent upon the other pieces coming
together first. The ATSC monthly newsletter [4] provides updates about the
various parts of the ATSC 3.0 standard.
These newsletters are archived on the
ATSC website.
For the suite of next-gen TV standards
collectively known as ATSC 3.0, a reballot for the A/322 Physical Layer proposed
standard [4] closed on 28 July 2016. Issuance of three more ballots was authorized
on 14 July 2016 to elevate these candidate
standards to proposed standards:
▼▼ A/330, Link Layer Protocol
▼▼ A/334, Audio Watermark Emission
▼▼ A/335, Video Watermark Emission.
The candidate standard period was
also extended from 30 July to 30 September 2016 for these standards:
▼▼ A/331, Signaling, Delivery, Synchronization, and Error Protection
▼▼ A/332, Service Announcement
▼▼ A/333, Service Usage Reporting
▼▼ A/336, Content Recovery in Redistribution Scenarios

IP Corner

A/338, Companion Device
▼▼ A/341, Video
▼▼ A/343, Captions and Subtitles.
A special session titled "Update on
ATSC 3.0-Next Generation Broadcast
Television," during the IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics,
held 8 January 2017, was chaired by
Wayne Luptow, which addressed changing consumer behavior and preferences
for providing TV content on a wide variety of devices.
▼▼

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Narisa N.Y. Chu (nchu@cwlabi.com) is
the cofounder of CWLab International,
and she is on the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society Board of Governors. She
currently works with interoperable electroencephalogram data for Consumer
Technology Association Healthcare and
the IEEE Brain Initiative. She is a Life
Senior Member of the IEEE.
Wayne Luptow (wayne.luplow@
zenith.com) is the vice president of Zenith
R&D, a subsidiary of LG Electronics. He
is on the Advanced Television Systems
Committee Board of Directors and the

IEEE Consumer Electronics Society
Board of Governors. He is a Life Fellow
of the IEEE.

REFERENCES
[1] C. D. Marsan. (2012, Mar.). Smart objects
demand a new approach to internet engineering.
Internet Eng. Task Force J. [Online]. Available:
http://www.internetsociety.org/articles/smartobjects-demand-new-approach-internetengineering
[2] OpenWSN. (2016). Open Stack. [Online].
Available: https://openwsn.atlassian.net/wiki/
pages/viewpage.action?pageId=688187
[3] C. Kothe. (2014, 10 June). Introduction to
modern brain-computer interface design. [Online].
Available: http://sccn.ucsd.edu/wiki/Introduction_
To_Modern_Brain-Computer_Interface_Design
[4] P. Gluckman. Path to ATSC 3.0 to be "much
quicker" than 1.0. [Online]. Available: http://
atsc.org/newsletter/path-atsc-3-0-muchquicker-1-0
[5] Definitions and Characteristics for Wearable Sleep Monitors, CTA-2052.1, 2016.
[6] Physical Activity Monitoring for Fitness
Wearables: Step Counting, CTA-2056, 2016.
[7] Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience. Univ. California-San Diego. La Jolla.
[Online]. Available: http://sccn.ucsd.edu

(continued from page 105)

REVERSE ENGINEERING
In some national legislation (e.g., that
of Germany) where reverse engineering
is currently not permitted or is widely
restricted, the TS Directive will lead to
a revolutionary change of the legal situation. In this regard, the TS Directive
provides for an approach of general
permissibility of reverse engineering
measures, as long as the information is
obtained by observation, study, disassembly, or the testing of a product or
object that has been made available to
the public or that is lawfully in the possession of the acquirer of the information who is free from any legally valid
duty to limit the acquisition of the trade
secret. The good news, at least from a
German perspective, is that contractual
limitations of this practice shall be

allowed, even though the enforcing of
such limitations throughout a supply
chain seems yet not uncomplicated.

CONCLUSION
After a five-year legislation process,
Brussels has set up a considerable set of
rules to harmonize important aspects of
substantive as well as procedural law
pertaining to secret know-how. Although
the TS Directive clearly states in the
recitals that the protection of secret
information shall not be regarded as a
new IP right, the mood and the effects of
the TS Directive's provisions are clearly
IPish, in particular the set of claims well
known from the Enforcement Directive
(2004/48/EC). However, the TS Directive brings up balanced regulation by
acknowledging both the commercial

interests of the rights holders and public
interest concerns, such as mobility of
workers or fundamental rights. Even
though the two-year transposition period
has just commenced, companies should
act now and consider changes in their
contracts as well as their organization
and technical protective measures for
trade secrets to avoid risks of losing
their secret asset in the future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sascha Pres (sascha.pres@noerr.com)
is a lawyer at Noerr LLP in Berlin, Germany. He advises international clients on
all issues relating to the protection and
exploitation of intellectual property, in
particular in the field of know-how protection, unfair competition, trademarks,
and copyrights.
APRIL 2017

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

117

http://www.internetsociety.org/articles/smart https://openwsn.atlassian.net/wiki/ http://sccn.ucsd.edu/wiki/Introduction_ http://http:// http://www.atsc.org/newsletter/path-atsc-3-0-much http://sccn.ucsd.edu

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - April 2017