An Arizona company is marketing license preparation services for spectrum the FCC is not even close to making available, is not accepting applications for, and which may have little value when it does, Communications Daily learned from company documents and interviews. The company, Smartcomm LLC of Phoenix, also has charged up to 280 times what others are charging for similar license preparation services.
Court of International Trade activity
As the authors of the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) work to revise their bills, Mozilla, Wikimedia, Yahoo and other technology companies say the bills are ultimately doomed, unnecessary and unlikely to pass. Technology groups have repeatedly told Congress that the bills deny website owners the right to due process of law, mimic Web censoring technologies used by China and Iran, and undermine the security of the Web. Both Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said they're committed to working with stakeholders to address these concerns, but Hill staffers have been mum on exactly what changes are being considered.
Wiley Rein promotions, effective Jan. 1: Thomas McCarthy to partner in appellate and telecommunications practices; Mark Sweet to partner in white collar defense practice; Robert DeFrancesco to of counsel in international trade practice; Rebecca Saitta to of counsel in financial restructuring practice; Maureen Thorson to of counsel in international trade practice; Elbert Lin rejoined firm in November as partner in appellate and telecommunications practice after completing a clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas … Indiana Utility Regulatory Commissioner Larry Landis reappointed.
AT&T’s telemarketing policies and practices show the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are wrong in contending that sellers will have no incentive to comply with rules set by the FCC unless the companies are held strictly liable for illegal calls on their behalf. The carrier has arranged to receive do-not-call (DNC) requests to contractors in a timely way, “which is essential to ensure that AT&T’s internal DNC lists are up-to-date,” Davida Grant, a lawyer for the company, told the commission in a filing posted Thursday about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). “AT&T also scrubs all telemarketing lists against the national and AT&T-specific DNC lists before providing the lists to third parties for telemarketing to prevent illegal telemarketing calls. Further, AT&T has contractual measures in place that obligate third parties telemarketing on their behalf to (1) provide AT&T with DNC requests they receive on a daily basis, (2) automatically block future calls to any number for which the third party has received a DNC request, (3) comply with all TCPA requirements, including call abandonment and Caller ID requirements, and (4) perform periodic compliance review and performance monitoring. Thus, contrary to DOJ and FTC claims, sellers cannot and do not hand off compliance obligations to third parties to avoid liability. Rather, sellers work with third parties that market on their behalf to avoid illegal telemarketing calls initiated by them or the third party.” The filing came in a proceeding to fulfill a request by a federal appeals court for an interpretation of the act. Section 227(c) gives a company a defense to liability if it has used “due care” to set up “reasonable practices and procedures to effectively prevent telephone solicitations” that violate this rule, AT&T noted. This standard contradicts factors proposed by the FTC for holding principals responsible for outside telemarketers, the carrier said.
There is an urgent need for Congress to pass a bill that curbs theft of copyrighted content and the sale of counterfeited goods online, some lawmakers, companies and associations said Tuesday on Capitol Hill. At an event, representatives of 17 companies and organizations put their support behind the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas (WID Oct 27 p1) OR (CD Oct 27 p13) OR (CED Oct 27 p8). The problem with “rogue sites” goes beyond the country’s borders, he said. “When you look at global Internet traffic today … one quarter is thought to violate copyright.” It has a negative impact on the economy and it steals innovator profits and jobs, he said.
Media and creative industry groups opposed a new bipartisan bill Thursday aimed at curbing online IP theft and copyright infringement. The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act offers a legislative alternative to the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act, giving the International Trade Commission (ITC) more power to target and sever funding to foreign websites that infringe copyrighted goods. But the MPAA said the legislation “fails to provide an effective way to target foreign rogue websites” and “goes easy on online piracy and counterfeiting.”
Forcing ISPs to monitor all e-communications on their network to prevent digital piracy would seriously infringe their freedom to conduct their business and may also breach customers’ civil rights, the European Court of Justice said in a closely watched opinion November 24. National authorities and courts must strike a fair balance between protecting intellectual property rights and operators’ businesses, something the Belgian court order against ISP Scarlet failed to do, the court said. The decision will dramatically affect the national and European debate on online copyright infringement, said telecom/Internet independent advisor Innocenzo Genna.
Openwave sued Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) at the International Trade Commission for allegedly infringing patents related to mobile Internet access, the company said Wednesday. The mobile software developer owns patents for five mobile device inventions that are directly infringed by several Apple and RIM products, the company alleged.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is “fully compatible” with EC law, even if it’s not drafted in exactly the same terms, the EU Directorate General-Trade said Thursday in a detailed answer to a group of well-known IP law experts that had questioned ACTA. EU policies would not have to be modified, DG Trade wrote. The U.S. administration has said the same thing about U.S. law and, since ACTA would not be ratified by Congress, it would not restrain Congress in future initiatives to change U.S. intellectual property law. The EU academics had said in January that ACTA deviates from EU law, for example by setting criminal penalties. The European Parliament is expected to vote on ACTA later this year. Some EU countries have said their national parliaments also will have to ratify ACTA. Meanwhile, requests to access a variety of documents on the history and legal nature of the agreement have been rejected by DG Trade and by the U.S. Trade Representative. An ACTA study by the Congressional Research Service for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., for which Knowledge Ecology International filed an appeal to the U.S. District Court was released by Wyden. DG Trade Secretary Karel De Gucht refused to make public the preparatory documents of ACTA as requested by EP member Francoise Castex.
April 4 FCBA International Telecom Committee brown bag lunch on Internet ecosystem, 12:30 p.m., Squire Sanders, 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 500 -- http://xrl.us/bimfn6