The Patent and Trademark Office inter partes review process improved patent quality and restored “public confidence in the patent system, which had eroded due to bad quality patents that were harming innovation,” said High Tech Inventors Alliance General Counsel John Thorne Wednesday. PTO Director Andrei Iancu testified before Congress that day (see 1804180073). The group warned against legislative proposals potentially “stripping the vitality of Section 101” of patent law and “creating high levels of uncertainty” in the patent granting process. The Supreme Court decisions discussed Wednesday “have benefited innovation” by striking down abstract patents, the group said.

Silicon Labs completed the acquisition of Sigma Designs' Z-Wave business, including some 100 employees, for $240 million cash, they said Wednesday. Silicon Labs announced in December a definitive agreement to buy Sigma for $282 million, contingent on Sigma's sale or “wind-down” of its slumping smart TV business. The companies restructured the deal for $240 million in February (see 1801310032).

The Internet Association “continues to support a ban on paid prioritization because it hurts consumers and lets ISPs pick winners and losers online,” a spokesman responded to a Tuesday House Communications Subcommittee hearing on the practice (see 1804170037). “Strong net neutrality protections that ban blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization ensure that people get what they pay for -- access to the entire internet. Paid prioritization incentivizes ISPs to reduce investment and maintain congested networks.”

U.S. consumers strongly prefer smartphones over digital home assistants as smart home controllers, said GfK Tuesday. The company canvassed 1,000 consumers online and found that 83 percent use their smartphones at home, compared with 75 percent for laptops, 54 percent for PCs and 34 percent for videogame consoles. It's "no surprise” consumers also regard smartphones as their preferred smart home “hubs,” said GfK, “especially for the many appliances that allow controlling and viewing the home at a distance.” Users of digital assistants remain very loyal to their devices, it said. Fifty-one percent of such users regard their devices as “extremely integrated” into daily lives, even though 75 percent bought their digital assistants less than a year ago. Worries about personal privacy could account for a “major obstacle to adoption” for digital assistants, it said, with 35 percent citing privacy as a big concern.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework v1.1 is “a significant advance that truly reflects the success of the public-private model for addressing cybersecurity challenges,” said Director Walter Copan Tuesday, announcing the version’s release. It has updates for authentication and identity; self-assessing cybersecurity risk; managing cybersecurity within the supply chain; and vulnerability disclosure, said the agency.

CenturyLink called attention to botnets, saying it tracked an average 195,000 daily threats, affecting 104 million unique targets, from servers and computers to handheld and other devices. They "are one of the foundational tools bad actors rely on to steal sensitive data and launch DDoS [distributed denial of service] attacks," said Mike Benjamin, head of CenturyLink's Threat Research Labs, in a Tuesday release on a 2018 threat report. "The United States, Russia and China hold the lead as the three most common points of origin for malicious internet activities," followed by Brazil and Ukraine, the telco said. The U.S., China, Germany, Russia and the U.K. were the top five countries targeted in bot attacks, it said. "Scanning for vulnerable devices is the basis" for two common botnets, Mirai and a precursor Gafgyt (also called Bashlite, Lizkebab and Torlus), the report said: "Once vulnerable devices are identified, they are instructed to connect to a download server to install the malware. They then may be instructed to port scan for vulnerable devices or use external scanners to find and harvest new potential bots. ... Mirai and Gafgyt have been tied to DDoS attacks against gaming servers and the botnet owner’s perceived rivals.

Netflix added 7.42 million new subscribers in Q1, easily beating its forecasts of 6.35 million global net additions, the company said Monday in its quarterly letter to shareholders. It added 1.96 million subscribers in the U.S., well ahead of its forecast of 1.45 million net adds, it said. Internationally, Netflix had 5.46 million new subscribers, beating its forecast of 4.9 million, it said. Revenue grew 43 percent year over year in Q1, “the fastest pace in the history of our streaming business,” helped in part by a 14 percent rise in average selling price, it said.

ICANN should investigate the decision by domain name registrar GoDaddy to throttle Port 43 (automated bulk) access and mask the information in certain Whois fields, NTIA Administrator David Redl said in a Monday letter to ICANN board Chairman Cherine Chalaby. GoDaddy began throttling and masking in January to help reduce spam calls and emails, it said in a notice. But Redl said the actions "are of grave concern" to NTIA "given the U.S. Government's interest in maintaining a WHOIS service that is quickly accessible for legitimate purposes." It's worried that other registrars and registries could copy GoDaddy's approach, he said. The actions are inconsistent with ICANN's multistakeholder approach and could breach ICANN's registrar accreditation agreement, he said. Redl urged the board to investigate and to consider an ICANN cross-community discussion of the matter. NTIA also wants ICANN to look into allowing other players, such as non-ICANN accredited registrars, to offer enhanced domain name system security features.

States backing South Dakota in an online sales tax case before the Supreme Court (see 1804040061) want a return to antiquated models found in the Articles of Confederation or to maximize revenue with minimal effort, wrote Institute for Policy Innovation researcher Bartlett Cleland Friday: “Instead of doing the real work of simplifying their tax codes and finding an effective means to collect the taxes they impose, states have been fighting” to reverse Quill v. North Dakota. That 1992 decision established that states can require retailers to collect state taxes only if the companies are physically located in the state. The court hears oral argument Tuesday.

The Center for Cybersecurity Policy and Law will work with the tech sector to improve hardware vulnerability disclosure policy and processes, wrote Intel Director-Global Security and Internet Governance Policy Audrey Plonk Thursday. “The goal is to identify the specific needs and circumstances of the hardware ecosystem, opportunities to advance disclosure policy and practice, and options for future improvements.”