GENEVA -- Talks have begun in ITU on a possible update to a patent policy for standard essential patents (SEPs) that is currently shared with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and which could affect licensing policies used by other standards development organizations, participants said after a “patent roundtable.” Industry appeared largely wary of the process, according to submissions. Regulators are “in sync” on the need to bring more clarity to certain aspects, ITU’s senior legal advisor said. A SEP is a patent that is essential to the implementation of a standard, the ITU website said.
Notable CROSS rulings
SAN FRANCISCO -- Movie studios and the MPAA will begin promoting UltraViolet more soon, Chris Dodd, MPAA chairman, and Mitch Singer, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s chief technology officer and president of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, told reporters Tuesday after an event at the Commonwealth Club. “It’s been under a year since we launched and we have over 5 million registered users already,” Singer said. “There’s been very little promotion and advertising by the studios and that’s going to happen very soon,” he said.
Europe needs its own cloud computing strategy if it’s to lead the rest of the world as it did with GSM, Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes said Thursday. Her plan to unleash the potential of the cloud won’t affect relations with the U.S., where many key cloud services providers are located, but will give European companies the chance to compete more fairly, she said at a press briefing. Small and mid-sized businesses applauded the move, but cloud computing companies and consumers voiced concerns.
The media ownership order the FCC is drafting likely will stick with the provisions outlined in last year’s notice of proposed rulemaking for that quadrennial review, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn predicted Wednesday. With the caveat that she has not seen the draft, and none is circulating for a vote, she speculated at a conference that it won’t likely propose more deregulation than the NPRM. “It will probably retain many of the existing media ownership rules” including a ban on one company owning more than one broadcast network and existing limits on how many radio stations can be commonly owned in a market, Clyburn said. There may be “a minor modification or two” to existing rules, she said.
The FCC plans to consider two orders this year designed to encourage mHealth technologies, Chairman Julius Genachowski said Monday at an event hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. One will streamline the FCC’s experimental licensing rules to encourage the creation of wireless health device “test beds” to permit easier testing of mHealth technologies, he said. The other will “comprehensively reform and modernize” the Rural Health Care Program to permit networks of hospital and health care facilities to jointly apply for RHC funds to boost broadband capacity and enable electronic health records. The commission will also recruit a permanent Health Care Director to be a central point of contact to external groups on all health-related issues, he said.
Colorado telecom companies are struggling to form a consensus on the state’s plan to overhaul its telecom rules and high-cost fund, as demonstrated by reply comments with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission made public after our deadline Wednesday. The PUC initiated the new rulemaking in August, heard initial comments Aug. 29, is holding meetings throughout September and will formally address concerns in hearings Oct. 1-4. Colorado’s biggest companies show broad agreement on deregulating VoIP and reducing the state’s high-cost fund but parties are still divided on whether the state commission should help fund broadband. Rural advocates have previously worried about how the reform may hurt rural broadband buildouts (CD Sept 10 p5).
Backers of media ownership deregulation endorsed FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai’s support of ending a cross-ownership ban on a company holding a radio or TV station and daily newspaper in the same market, and for letting on a case-by-case basis foreigners hold greater than 25 percent stakes in U.S. broadcasters (CD Sept 20 p6). Also the same day Pai spoke to the NAB Radio show about deregulation, executives from the Newspaper Association of America met with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski about cross-ownership deregulation. There’s a “need for greater flexibility for investments in newspaper companies by companies that also own television licensees,” the executives also told Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, Office of Strategic Planning Acting Chief Elizabeth Andrion and aides to Genachowski on Wednesday, a filing recounted. There’s also a “need for ownership relief in small as well as large markets,” Thursday’s filing in docket 09-182 said (http://xrl.us/bnqnce). The Coalition for Broadcast Investment that sought an end to the ban on foreign stakes above 25 percent is “gratified” Pai “embraced our view that broadcasters should have access to capital on the same terms as their cable, satellite and online counterparts,” said industry lawyer Mace Rosenstein of a Covington & Burling, representing the group. “We look forward to working with the commission as it considers our request asking the commission to exercise its existing statutory discretion to authorize broadcast foreign investment that is consistent with the public interest and our national security.” Bonneville International and Scranton Times LP, two owners of dailies and stations in the same market that have sought an end to cross-ownership restrictions, said they hope the full commission “will engage in a productive dialogue about this rule very soon."
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai wants the agency to communicate more with broadcasters to help eliminate what he said some executives perceive as a regulator disinterested in radio and TV station priorities (CD March 5 p2). In the 25 meetings he’s had in his four months as a commissioner, “I keep hearing the same thing,” he told the NAB radio show in Dallas Wednesday. “Unfortunately, it seems there’s a widespread perception that today’s FCC is largely indifferent to the fate of your business.” As FCC members are preliminarily slated to vote next week on a notice of proposed rulemaking to hold a voluntary incentive auction of TV station frequencies (CD Bulletin, Sept 7) to free up airwaves for mobile broadband, Pai sought deregulation of media ownership and foreign investment rules and an initiative focused on AM.
Companies that own newspapers and broadcast stations in the same market got extra time from the FCC Media Bureau to update their requests for waivers from the ban on newspaper-broadcast cross ownership rules, said an order released Monday (http://xrl.us/bnp6q2). The deadline to file such updates had been Sept. 27. But a group of media companies asked the bureau to delay the deadline until after the FCC publishes its latest quadrennial review of its media ownership rules. “Granting this extension of time will ensure that Media Parties’ supplemental filings can address the issues relevant to the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule that is adopted in that pending proceeding,” the order said. “We note that the Media Parties have represented that they will make the supplemental filings ... ‘notwithstanding the pendency of any administrative or judicial challenges'” to the media ownership rules, the order said. The parties will have until 60 days after the FCC releases its quadrennial review of its media ownership rules to file supplemental waiver material.
Five owners of broadcasters and daily newspapers in the same market sought a delay, to 60 days after the FCC releases an upcoming order on its delayed 2010 quadrennial media ownership review, to change pending requests to the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule. Bonneville International, Calvary, Cox Enterprises, Morris Communications and Scranton Times want to extend the Sept. 27 NBCO deadline for supplements set by the Media Bureau last month (http://xrl.us/bno79v). It dismissed as moot those companies’ request to extend a cross-ownership waiver deadline for the 2006 ownership review, after the Supreme Court this summer said it wouldn’t consider challenges to that quadrennial order. “Changes to the NBCO Rule currently are under Commission consideration on remand from the Third Circuit and in the pending 2010 Quadrennial Media Ownership Review” (CD Jan 20 p4), the five media companies said in a new motion. “Until that proceeding is concluded, the NBCO Rule and the applicable standards for evaluation of waivers of that rule are uncertain and subject to change.” Making the companies file waiver supplements now, and at the FCC “the attendant staff review of those requests, would be a substantial waste of both private and administrative resources,” said Monday’s filing in docket 06-121 (http://xrl.us/bno8a6). “The Media Parties hereby represent that they will file such supplements notwithstanding the pendency of any administrative or judicial challenges to the Commission’s Report and Order and regardless of whether the NBCO Rule adopted by the Commission is effective or its effectiveness has been stayed."