A week after announcing it would acquire Red Bend Software and software services company Symphony Teleca (see 1501220039), Harman said Thursday it formed a strategic collaboration with Chinese Internet search provider Baidu to launch vehicle networking technology. The CarLife collaboration will offer “advanced Internet capabilities, entertainment features and location-based services” on Harman in-vehicle infotainment head units in the Chinese market. In a statement, David Jin, Harman’s president-Northeast Asia and Greater China, said succeeding in the “quickly evolving segment of in-car technology requires a platform that can be easily updated and adapted,” and CarLife will allow Harman to provide “flexible, innovative solutions and content to OEMs that have been tailored to fit the Chinese auto market.” The cross-platform technology is compatible with Android and iOS operating systems, covering more than 95 percent of smartphone users, Harman said, and will provide “millions of drivers” a “more open and intelligent vehicle networking experience.” On the Harman earnings call Thursday, CEO Dinesh Paliwal compared CarLife to Apple's CarPlay and Google's Android Auto. He said CarLife will contribute to the “democratization of technology at the entry level” of the car market. Harman will work with Baidu to integrate advanced connectivity, entertainment features and location-based services into its head units, “resulting in a more immersive connected car experience,” Paliwal said. He said China and other emerging markets represent the largest growth opportunities for the company.

AT&T said it’s buying NII Holdings’ Nextel Mexico wireless business for $1.88 billion. The deal includes Nextel Mexico’s spectrum licenses, network assets and 3 million subscribers. AT&T said its purchase of Nextel Mexico will “support AT&T’s plans to bring greater competition and faster mobile Internet speeds to the Mexican wireless market.” The deal also will advance AT&T’s plan to create North American mobile service area that covers more than 400 million consumers in Mexico and the U.S., the carrier said Monday. AT&T said it expects the deal to close by the middle of the year, pending approval by a federal bankruptcy court in New York “which is overseeing the restructuring of NII Holdings.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission and Alibaba are collaborating on voluntary consumer safety, CPSC said in a news release Tuesday. China’s online and mobile commerce company will block the sales of illegal or recalled U.S. products or make them unavailable to U.S. buyers on Alibaba platforms, it said. The company will also provide product safety information for U.S. importers on its platforms.

Global patent filing increased 9 percent in 2013, said a World Intellectual Property Organization report released Tuesday. China’s patent filing increased 26 percent in 2013, reaching 25 percent of all patent filings worldwide, said the report. The U.S. had the second highest number of patent filings, which grew 5 percent in 2013, said WIPO. The European Patent Office had a 0.4 percent decline in patent filings; Japan’s filings slowed by 4 percent. Trademark filings grew by 6 percent globally in 2013. WIPO said China’s 14 percent growth in trademark filings was the highest globally; such filings increased by 13 percent in the U.S.

U.K.'s BT said it began “exclusive negotiations” with Deutsche Telekom and U.K. telco Orange to buy the EE wireless carrier for the equivalent of $19.5 billion in cash and new BT shares. The proposed deal would give DT a 12 percent ownership stake in BT, while Orange would own 4 percent. The exclusivity of those negotiations will last for several weeks, allowing BT to finalize a definitive deal and complete its due diligence, BT said in a Monday news release.

The FTC’s safe harbor negotiations with the European Union have become “more difficult,” FTC Commissioner Julie Brill said at a Direct Marketing Association event Monday (see 1412080061). “Expectations in the European public” are “very high” in terms of “doing away with safe harbor or radically altering it,” she said. “The adults of the room understand the difficult situation that they’ve been placed in and they’re trying to come up with a reasonable way out,” Brill said. But the negotiations are “harder now,” she said.

TechAmerica will begin work to form a position on the classification of smart watch products for customs duty purposes, the group said on its website. TechAmerica's Customs Committee formed a working group "to develop common positions to provide in advocacy efforts" with Customs and Border Protection and other countries' customs officials, it said. The effort is in preparation for the World Customs Organization Harmonized System Committee meeting in March, during which one or more smart watches will be classified, it said Wednesday. The classification decisions are used to promote consistency in product tariff treatment around the world. The past few years have seen major progress in smart watch technology, and many TechAmerica members now sell the products, it said. "Due to the different functions included in the smartwatches," several classification categories are being considered, including classification as digital cameras, pedometers or wrist watches, it said: "Depending on how these products ultimately are classified, the rate at which wearable technologies and/or their components are assessed for tariffs can vary significantly."

The European Parliament passed a resolution Thursday urging the EU Commission and member states to “break down barriers to growth” in the EU’s digital single market, a Parliament news release said. “The resolution underlines that ‘the online search market is of particular importance in ensuring competitive conditions within the digital single market’ and welcomes the Commission’s pledges to investigate further the search engines’ practices,” it said. Members of Parliament want EU competition rules enforced and for search engines to be unbundled from other commercial services. They want the EC “to consider proposals with the aim of unbundling search engines from other commercial services” in the long run, the release said. Consumer Watchdog urged the European Parliament to pass the resolution in order to break up Google’s “monopolistic dominance” in the EU, in a news release Thursday. House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., led a Nov. 25 bipartisan letter from House lawmakers to European Parliament officials cautioning them about the resolution’s stemming of cross-border data flows.

The U.K. government will introduce a new counterterrorism and security bill Wednesday, said Home Secretary Theresa May in a speech Monday. The bill is intended to thwart global terrorists, particularly those within the Islamic State (IS), who are planning attacks on the U.K. and other Western nations, she said. The bill will “help control and disrupt the movements” of terrorists traveling abroad to fight in Iraq and Syria and improve the U.K.’s border security, said May. The bill, which would create a privacy and civil liberties board, would also help to “close down at least part of the communications data capability gap” between the terrorism group and the U.K., she said. May cited IS’s “significant propaganda reach” via social media as a significant concern.

The U.S. government and the FCC need to ensure that the ITU “stays focused on its core function” of standards development for broadband access, FCC Commissioner Michael O’Reilly said at a commission meeting Friday. O’Reilly suggested the U.S. should pursue a leadership position at the ITU to continue to promote its agenda. The ITU’s mandate won’t change for the next four years, since no amendments were passed at its recent Plenipotentiary, said Kathryn O’Brien, assistant chief of the FCC International Bureau. The U.S. government had a “very positive outcome” at the conference, she said. Conference proposals that called on the ITU to become involved in surveillance regulations and that would have “undermined” the multistakeholder model were rejected, O’Brien said. The FCC's chief desire is to maintain the ITU’s remit on standards development and best practices for cybersecurity and access to broadband, she said.