Cable and CE interests used replies this week in the FCC’s rulemaking into how to level the playing field for retail-based CableCARD devices (CED April 22 p3) by rehashing familiar arguments in the years-old CableCARD debate. Cable and other pay-TV providers renewed their call for an FCC waiver from CableCARD rules for digital tuning adapters (DTAs). CE companies urged the commission to reject a “blanket waiver” on DTAs and to go slow on any such exemptions until the “true cost” of CableCARD “alternatives” can be established.

Though CEA and the ITI Council made peace with New York City and green groups in settling their lawsuit to stop the now-moot city e-waste program from taking effect (CED June 29 p1), both sides in the dispute couldn’t resist taking parting shots late Monday even as they hailed the settlement agreement.

Memory supplier Micron Technology is seeing several promising trends and said Q3 results improved from a year earlier. But shares fell 13 percent Tuesday and closed at $8.67 after it offered in an earnings call a conservative forecast for DRAM bit growth.

Conventional book sales will plunge $2 billion during the next four years as electronic versions surge to $6 billion in annual revenue, Barnes & Noble Chairman Leonard Riggio said Tuesday at an analyst meeting in New York.

A month to the day after New York Gov. David Paterson signed his state’s e-waste measure into law, CEA and the ITI Council said Monday they settled their e-waste lawsuit against New York City and its co-defendant, the Natural Resources Defense Council. CEA and ITI filed their lawsuit last July 24 seeking a preliminary injunction blocking the New York City e-waste program from taking effect and a declaration from the court that the program’s direct collection requirement was unconstitutional.

A decision on Abt Electronics’ bid to buy inventory from defunct Flanner’s Home Entertainment is expected in about a week, Abt General Manager Phil Hannon told us.

The “machine-or-transformation” test is not the only one determining patent eligibility, ruled the U.S. Supreme Court Monday in its long-awaited Bilski vs. Kappos ruling. Courts must remain open to other standards in patents of the Information Age, wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. The high court declined to set specific rules lower courts could follow. The court also declined to set specific parameters for determining the patentability of business methods, saying the patent before it should be rejected as “an unpatentable abstract idea,” without defining what that means.

Tech and Internet companies may well have breathed sighs of relief after learning that financial industry revamp legislation agreed upon Friday by the House and Senate did away with provisions they didn’t like (CED May 24 p6). Several groups said they were especially glad the FTC’s authority would not be expanded. The bill now goes back to the House and Senate for final floor votes.

DivX TV will launch in October as a firmware upgrade to LG’s Blu-ray players, DivX Brand Director Thomas Huntington told us. LG is shipping the BD590 ($379) Blu-ray player featuring DLNA-compiant media, WiFi and a 250 GB hard drive as well as the BD570 ($279), which drops the drive.

The North American market for silicon TV tuners will reach 3 million units in 2011 as the chips start replacing can tuners, Microtune Chief Financial Officer Justin Chapman said Friday at the Sidoti & Co. investor conference in New York. Microtune is banking on its MT3141 analog demodulator/silicon tuner, which is expected to start production late this year, grabbing a large share of the growing market, Chapman said.