The International Trade Commission announces that a section 337 patent-based complaint has been filed regarding certain liquid crystal display devices and products interoperable with the same.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has posted a draft version of its final interpretive rule that would add a new 16 CFR Part 1200 on the term "children’s product" as used in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA). It also provides additional guidance on the factors that are considered when evaluating what is a children’s product.1
More data on the wireless market would help the FCC better assess how competition may be hurt by special access rates, spectrum policies, early termination fees (ETFs) and exclusive handset arrangements, said the GAO. In a report released Thursday by Capitol Hill Democrats, GAO found significant consolidation and increased wireless usage since 2000. That has resulted in lower prices and better coverage, but also has made it tough for small and regional providers to win subscribers, make network investments and get handsets, GAO said. The report offers support to conclusions in the FCC’s wireless competition report that consolidation has hurt competition. In its May 20 report, the FCC declined to find that the U.S. wireless market is competitive, a sharp departure from previous reports (CD May 21 p1).
The International Trade Commission announces that a section 337 patent-based complaint has been filed regarding certain toner cartridges and components thereof.
Direct broadcast satellite providers and broadcasters disagree about the antenna standard that the FCC should use in defining unserved households eligible to receive distant signals, they said in comments to the commission. The agency is following through on parts of the Satellite TV Localism and Extension Act (STELA), and both sides replied Tuesday to a rulemaking notice on the standard (CD July 29 p11) in docket 10-152. The proposed rule would continue to use the outdoor antenna standard, which classifies consumers who can’t receive broadcast signals by outdoor antenna as unserved and so eligible to get distant signals by DBS. STELA doesn’t specify the type of antenna to be used in the predictive model and on-site testing that determine distant signal eligibility. Under the law, the commission must act by Nov. 23 to implement the act.
A federal appeals court in Philadelphia tossed out two key provisions in rules for designated entities (DE) approved prior to the AWS-1 auction in 2006, which were also in effect during the 700 MHz auction that started the following year. Council Tree, which took the FCC to court, claimed victory Tuesday even though the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit did not invalidate the results of either auction.
The State Department is proposing to amend the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) to exempt from approval requirements intra-company transfers of defense articles to employees who are dual nationals or third-country nationals.
On July 29, 2010, the Senate Appropriations Committee reported S. 3677, the fiscal year 20111 appropriations bill for financial services and general government, including the CPSC, Treasury, TTB, FTC, SBA, etc.
Questions about what kinds of pay-TV distributors are entitled to use the FCC program access rules to seek carriage of vertically integrated-programming are better answered in a separate rulemaking, rather than in the context of a condition to approval of the Comcast-NBCU merger, Time Warner Cable argued in its reply comments in the merger review. Such a rulemaking could also answer questions about online distributors’ duties to provide closed-captioning and the emergency alert system, it said. “To the extent these issues need to be addressed, the full range of OTT [over-the-top] providers’ regulatory responsibilities should be considered in a proceeding of industry-wide scope, instead of adopting a standalone condition that would purport to give online entities rights under the program access rules,” it said.
Questions about what kinds of pay-TV distributors are entitled to use the FCC program access rules to seek carriage of vertically integrated-programming are better answered in a separate rulemaking, rather than in the context of a condition to approval of the Comcast-NBCU merger, Time Warner Cable argued in its reply comments in the merger review. Such a rulemaking could also answer questions about online distributors’ duties to provide closed-captioning and the emergency alert system, it said. “To the extent these issues need to be addressed, the full range of OTT [over-the-top] providers’ regulatory responsibilities should be considered in a proceeding of industry-wide scope, instead of adopting a standalone condition that would purport to give online entities rights under the program access rules,” it said.