Wireless broadband in 2021 will be faster than wireline access now is, cars could be virtual social networks, radio stations will have “fully embraced” HD Radio and “no one cares” anymore about net neutrality, predicted CEA President Gary Shapiro. Autos could become rolling “music devices” with Internet access and electronics in the backseat akin to “rolling homes,” with most cars having social media features, he said Wednesday. Speaking to communications lobbyists and executives, Shapiro acknowledged that his predictions were semi-serious and that he was asked by President Patrick Maines of the Media Institute, whose luncheon he addressed, not to speak about spectrum in his prepared remarks. He managed anyway to get in a dig at the NAB, at odds with the CEA over spectrum and broadcasters’ desire for more cellphones to receive terrestrial radio.

Two new advisory committees aimed at enforcing intellectual property laws are a step in the right direction and are in line with the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO IP) Act, some legislators and IP advocates said. The committees are another important step toward fulfilling the promise of the PRO IP Act, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement Wednesday.

A federal judge lifted a nearly five-year stay on EchoStar Technologies’ patent infringement suit against TiVo, potentially setting the stage for yet another face off in court between the companies. U.S. District Court Judge David Folsom, Texarkana, Texas, imposed a stay in the case in July 2006, pending the outcome of a U.S. Patent Office re-examination of four EchoStar patents. EchoStar’s infringement suit against TiVo is separate from one TiVo filed against it that’s pending for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CED Nov 10 p1).

"There isn’t one company, Apple or any other company for that matter, that’s driving” Disney’s digital media strategy, Disney CEO Robert Iger said in a Tuesday earnings call. “It’s important” for Disney “to be out in front and to be experimental” when making its content available via new platforms “because we haven’t discovered yet the silver bullet or the business model that’s going to prevail,” he said. “It probably will be many.”

Intentional or unintentional company and inventor misspellings or spelling changes could confuse and mislead unwary patent searchers trying to analyze RealD’s intellectual property protection on RDZ 3D, the full HD passive 3D TV technology that the company announced at CES jointly with Samsung.

STANFORD, Calif. -- More than two decades after the downfall of Crazy Eddie’s CE empire, fraud controls remain sorely lacking across U.S. business, Eddie Antar’s accountant cousin said. Even with publicly held companies, auditors and the SEC are vastly outgunned by crooks, said Sam Antar, who was Crazy Eddie’s chief financial officer. “Half the mom-and-pops” in New York would go out of business if they lost the benefits of cash-skimming, he said at a Stanford University appearance sponsored by a corporate-governance center.

Sprint Nextel has launched the dual-touchscreen Kyocera Echo smartphone as part of a product platform that could eventually include 4G and LTE-based models, said John Chier, director of corporate communications at Kyocera.

Comparable store sales at Hhgregg were down 6 percent for fiscal Q3 ended Dec. 31, because of weakness in core categories including video, appliances and small electronics, CEO Dennis May said in an earnings call Tuesday. Expecting growth, the company “overindexed” in premium video technologies including 3D and IPTV, he said, and sales in the categories “fell short of expectations.” The weak economy, combined with lack of content and the price gap between low-end TVs and 3D TV, “continued to mute growth and limit near-term expectations,” May said.

The NAB and the Association for Maximum Service TV asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to continue to hold in abeyance challenges to the FCC’s white spaces order. The groups were responding to a request by the court for the parties’ opinions about how the case should be handled as the commission considers petitions for reconsideration.

The momentum for tablets promised at CES will translate to shipments of 55.7 million units in 2011, a 200 percent year-over-year jump, DisplaySearch said. The growth rate will drop over the next few years, but tablets’ share of the mobile PC market, also made up of notebooks and netbooks, will grow to nearly 35 percent, 172.4 million units, by 2014, said a report by the research firm. Mobile PC shipments are expected to reach 503.8 million units by 2014.