The Senate Judiciary Committee remained scheduled at our deadline Monday to mark up the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) Tuesday, but it remained unclear if the committee would be able to reach an agreement in time, industry officials told us. The committee is set to meet at 2:30 p.m. in 106 Dirksen. Senate Judiciary had scheduled the Tuesday meeting so the S-1720 markup would not bog down the committee’s regular Thursday session, but it may still end up on the docket for Thursday, an industry lawyer said. Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement Monday that he still hopes “we can begin consideration of that package tomorrow.” Leahy and other members of the committee have said for weeks that negotiations are close to completion on a compromise version of S-1720, the Senate’s marquee bill to curb patent litigation abuse (CD April 4 p9).

The FCC should avoid imposing regulations and rely instead on voluntary agreements allowing more Americans to send emergency texts to 911, CTIA said in comments filed in response to a January rulemaking notice. The FCC agreed to seek further comment on issues including whether to impose a text-to-911 mandate on interconnected over-the-top (OTT) text providers like Apple’s iMessage or Samsung’s ChatOn (CD Jan 31 p3).

The FCC signaled it won’t back down on a requirement that all TV stations post online all new materials that go into political files now kept on paper in main studios, said fans and foes of the rule in interviews Monday. The Media Bureau Friday issued what some on all sides of the issue called a relatively rare public notice reminding broadcasters of the political file requirement. It was rare because the PN appeared almost three months before the requirement takes effect July 1, and because when that requirement takes effect no materials need be uploaded to fcc.gov retroactively, said industry and public interest lawyers. Other parts of TV station public-inspection records already must be uploaded to the FCC’s website.

The satellite industry is drawing attention to data that it perceives as flawed in forecasting the amount of spectrum needed for terrestrial wireless services. It’s engaging in a discussion on the matter along with the criticality of its services in the C band in preparation for the World Radiocommunication Conference in 2015 (WRC-15) in Geneva Nov. 2-27, 2015. A contentious agenda item would consider opening the use of the C band to international mobile telecommunications (IMT) entities.

LAS VEGAS -- The Advanced TV Systems Committee’s “S34” specialist group, assigned to fashion the “applications and presentations” of the next-generation ATSC 3.0 DTV system, thinks it’s “not in scope” to include 8K resolution in the proposed “candidate standard” that’s expected next April, the group’s chairwoman said in an “ATSC 3.0 Update” panel Sunday at the NAB Show’s Broadcast Engineering Conference. “We are looking at a very flexible service model, with the idea being that you as broadcasters can choose different aspects of services that you want to deliver, but also allowing wide flexibility on the consumer side,” said S34 Chairwoman Madeleine Noland, an LG consultant. S34 also is to pick ATSC 3.0’s audio and video codecs, and is responsible for its closed-captioning, personalization and interactivity, she said: “If you see it on the screen, that’s what we do.”

KINUTA, Japan -- Though most of the consumer electronics and broadcasting worlds seem fixated on 4K (see separate story above in this issue), Japanese broadcaster NHK is promoting 8K Super Hi-Vision as “creating the future of broadcasting” with “16 times the number of pixels” of ordinary HD and fully immersive 22.2 multi-channel sound. We visited NHK’s Science and Technology Research Labs Thursday on the outskirts of Tokyo for a first-hand look at NHK’s demonstrations of 8K Super Hi-Vision on its home turf.

The FCC new 2014 quadrennial review doesn’t appear likely to lead to much change in broadcast ownership rules, said several broadcast attorneys, public interest officials and a broadcast executive in interviews. Though the actual text of Monday’s further rulemaking notice launching the review hasn’t been released, the information released by the FCC makes it look to many industry observers as though Chairman Tom Wheeler is kicking the can down the road on issues like cross-ownership, several told us. “The FNPRM for the 2014 quadrennial review recommends retaining the FCC’s existing ownership rules virtually intact,” said blog of the Wiley Rein law firm.

The Office of Advocacy at the Small Business Administration urged the FCC to strengthen protections for small multichannel video programming distributors and revise programming access rules on the heels of Comcast’s plan to pay about $45 billion for Time Warner Cable. SBA backed proposals by the American Cable Association asking the commission to extend program access rules to the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC), and to clarify the obligation of cable-affiliated programmers to extend the same volume discounts to buying groups that they do to individual MVPDs. Also last week, NCTC and Viacom almost entered what would have been the co-op’s first blackout of cable channels.

The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled Thursday on a patent case with potential implications for the agency’s handling of electronic transmissions. But patent lawyers told us Friday that an initial notice on the ruling indicates there’s been no change in ITC precedent. The ITC ruled that invisible teeth-straightening system manufacturer ClearCorrect violated five of Invisalign manufacturer Align Technology’s patents under Section 337 of the Tariff Act, but didn’t infringe on two others (http://1.usa.gov/1jLh5Ie). ClearCorrect said it plans to appeal.

Payphone service providers (PSP) in three states argued in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday that the FCC erred by refusing to overturn public utility commission decisions to enforce Telecom Act provisions intended to promote competition for payphone service. The PUCs had denied PSP petitions for tens of millions of dollars in refunds. In Illinois Public Telecommunications Association v. FCC, IPTA, the Independent Payphone Association of New York and the Payphone Association of Ohio are asking the D.C. Circuit to mandate that AT&T and Verizon be ordered to pay the refunds as well as potentially hundreds of millions to the U.S. Treasury.