FCC action on net neutrality -- and NTIA plans to transition oversight of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and domain name system functions to a global multistakeholder group -- could have profoundly negative effects for Internet freedom, FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said Tuesday. O'Rielly dedicated nearly his entire 20-minute speech at an FCBA luncheon to the future of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. O'Rielly’s remarks harkened back to similar warnings issued by former Commissioner Robert McDowell, O'Rielly’s predecessor on the FCC.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s creation and implementation of first-inventor-to-file (FITF) rules under the America Invents Act (AIA) continues to be a learning experience for the agency a year after AIA’s FITF provisions went into effect, PTO officials said during an agency event Tuesday. The FITF provisions in AIA, which went into effect March 16, 2013, were meant to redefine prior art in order to simplify the U.S. patent system and harmonize it with systems in other countries, said PTO Deputy Director Michelle Lee. PTO used the FITF language in AIA and stakeholder input to create the final rules it issued last year, she said.

Competitive providers and state public utility commissions raised several concerns about AT&T’s IP transition wire center trials, in comments posted by the FCC Tuesday. CLECs said AT&T hadn’t addressed their concerns about wholesale access when the copper is removed, nor described its proposal (CD March 3 p3) in sufficient detail. State regulators questioned how the IP services in the proposed wire center trials would work with 911 and battery power, and said the trials shouldn’t spur any permanent policy changes on the IP transition until AT&T addresses those deficiencies. Other ILECs supported the proposal. AT&T has asked to do time-division multiplexing-to-IP trials in Carbon Hill, Ala., and Kings Point, Fla.

Several telecom entities urged the FCC in comments on the process reform report to quickly take steps to eliminate unnecessary policies and streamline others to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Comments were due Monday.

The FCC made joint sales agreements attributable for ownership calculations and kicked off the 2014 ownership quadrennial review with a 3-2 vote split along party lines, at Monday’s open meeting. Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly voted against what Pai called “a thumb in the eye of Congress.” As expected (CD March 28 p1), the new JSA rule gives existing arrangements where one company accounts for more than 15 percent of another’s sold advertising time two years to be unwound and includes an expedited waiver process, the Media Bureau said. The FNPRM that begins the new ownership proceeding incorporates the 2010 quadrennial review, seeks comment on changes to cross-ownership rules and proposes rules for requiring disclosure of shared service agreements. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said JSAs had been used to skirt the commission’s rules, though the ownership rule change is “admittedly not perfect.” Chairman Tom Wheeler praised it for closing “an end run around the rules” that allowed large companies to amass too much market power.

Patent industry observers said Monday they believe the Supreme Court will create a workable, narrowly tailored rule to determine when software is patentable via its upcoming ruling in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International. The high court heard oral argument Monday, in which Alice argued its claim to four patents on financial software is valid under Section 101 of the Patent Act. Alice is one of several patent cases the court has heard during its current term -- advocates expect two cases the court heard in February involving health and fitness industry patents are likely to determine when a court can use fee-shifting to award attorney’s fees to the party that wins a case. The court’s rulings in Alice and other cases are likely to help clarify some of the confusion over patent cases, but they remain part of the larger patent revamp landscape, which includes a push from the White House and work in Congress, the Patent and Trademark Office and the FTC, advocates said.

The FCC Monday approved service rules for a 65 MHz AWS-3 auction, setting the stage for the FCC’s first major spectrum sale since 2008, likely by the end of the year. Small carriers got part of what they were looking for, with one of the 10 x 10 MHz blocks proposed in the order now divided into two 5 x 5 MHz blocks (CD March 27 p1).

The FCC unanimously approved an order that prohibits competing top-four TV stations in a market from engaging in joint retransmission consent negotiations, as was expected (CD March 28 p1). The FCC is “leveling the negotiating table,” Chairman Tom Wheeler said Monday at the agency’s monthly meeting Monday. The order is aimed at helping to “curtail practices that would put upward pressure on cable companies,” he said. Joint negotiation by these stations “leads to higher retransmission consent fees because the practice reduces competition between the stations,” the Media Bureau said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1kjYotA). The commission also agreed to seek comment on a further notice of proposed rulemaking that looks at whether to eliminate or modify network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules.

Expect more channels to be blacked out to broadband and TV subscribers of multichannel video programming distributors, as MVPDs increasingly say no to programmer requests to pay more for content, said subscription-video industry executives in interviews Monday. That was as a midnight deadline was nearing for all of Viacom’s cable channels to be carried on small- and mid-sized MVPDs that jointly bargain for a programming contract under the National Cable Television Cooperative (CD March 26 p16). NCTC said a blackout of channels like Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon would be a first in the co-op’s 30-year history. The down-to-the-wire talks between NCTC, representing MVPDs with about 5.2 million subscribers, and Viacom, one of the biggest cable programmers, may foreshadow what’s to come as other pay-TV deals with additional programmers expire, said cable and telecom executives.

The FCC approved by a 5-0 vote Monday an order that opens up the 5.1 GHz band for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed use, calling it the Unlicensed-National Information Infrastructure-1 (U-NII-1) band. The order also harmonizes rules for the U-NII-1 band with rules for the U-NII-3 band.