In a 10-7 vote, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade sent forward the Targeting Rogue and Opaque Letters Act (TROL Act) Wednesday, a House Commerce Committee news release said. “The TROL Act is a balanced solution to stop the practice of fraudulent and abusive patent demand letters, while preserving the ability of patent holders to legitimately protect their intellectual property,” the release said. “Abusive patent assertion entities (PAEs), or patent trolls, unfairly target small businesses and cost American companies tens of billions of dollars every year by threatening litigation. The TROL act seeks to increase transparency and accountability in patent demand letters and provides the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with the authority to levy fines on bad actors that send deceptive demand letters.” Subcommittee Chairman Michael Burgess, R-Texas, said the committee would continue to work to strengthen the legislation and encouraged stakeholders to participate. Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said he wouldn't support the bill because it “creates a disincentive to enforcement by tying the hands of state attorneys general and by creating barriers to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforcement that are simply too high.” The bill “would completely pre-empt the 20 laws that expressly address abusive patent assertion communications” and “severely constrains states’ ability to take an active role by limiting available remedies and placing an arbitrary cap on civil penalties,” Pallone said at the markup, according to opening remarks. “Just like with the data breach bill, if Congress seeks to pre-empt specific state laws -- especially on issues on which the states have been leaders fighting unfair and deceptive acts, such as false and misleading demand letters -- the federal effort should be at least as strong as those state laws,” Pallone said. Four amendments were introduced for the bill. One by Burgess was accepted on a voice vote, another was withdrawn. Amendments proposed by Democrats Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Joseph Kennedy of Massachusetts were defeated on a partisan roll call vote.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will open the agency’s privacy workshop Tuesday, followed by an “Overview of the Collection and Use of Broadband Subscriber Data,” by University of Pennsylvania associate professor Matt Blaze, a commission news release said Wednesday. The first panel, on “Privacy Implications Associated with Broadband Internet Access Services,” includes Connecticut Assistant Attorney General Michele Lucan; Senior Policy Counsel for the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute Laura Moy; AT&T Senior Vice President-Federal Regulatory & Chief Privacy Officer Robert Quinn; NTCA Vice President-Policy Joshua Seidemann; Catherine Tucker, associate professor of management science at MIT Sloan; and NTIA Director-Privacy Initiatives John Verdi. Panelists on the second panel, “Application of Section 222 of the Communications Act to Broadband Internet Access Services,” include Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld; DLA Piper high-tech and privacy lawyer Jim Halpert; Wilkinson Barker Knauer attorney Nancy Libin; Center for Democracy and Technology General Counsel Erik Stallman; and Georgia Institute of Technology professor Peter Swire. The workshop starts at 10 a.m. EDT at FCC headquarters, the FCC said.
Lawmakers in both chambers are preparing a letter to the FCC to address one of NTCA’s USF priorities on stand-alone broadband, reviving a bicameral, bipartisan letter sent to the FCC last Congress. NTCA also received promises from two lawmakers Tuesday that they will take the group’s priorities to heart, with legislation if need be. Prominent topics included overhaul of the USF, call completion problems and net neutrality, a controversial and partisan item in Congress.
House Republicans unveiled drafts of a trio of FCC transparency bills Tuesday, associating the bills with the Communications Act overhaul they're pursuing. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Mike O’Rielly will testify at a Communications Subcommittee hearing on FCC reauthorization and transparency April 30 at 2 p.m.
Sprint and T-Mobile spent less on lobbying so far this year, Q1 lobbying reports showed. Monday was the deadline for quarterly lobbying reports, but many trade associations and companies hadn't filed theirs by our deadline. Observers have said net neutrality and proposed acquisitions are big drivers of spending in the telecom space, and those issues turned up repeatedly in the Q1 forms posted this week.
CenturyLink became the latest to file an appeal of the FCC’s net neutrality order, filing a petition Friday for reconsideration in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The company became the second ISP to appeal the order; AT&T filed Tuesday. USTelecom, of which CenturyLink and AT&T are members, also has appealed, as well as Alamo Broadband, the American Cable Association, CTIA and NCTA (see 1504140046). All but Alamo, which filed in the 5th Circuit, appealed to the D.C. Circuit.
Promoting ultra-high-speed networks for all Americans and defending the recent net neutrality vote, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler gave the keynote Tuesday at the Broadband Communities Summit in Austin. Wheeler said it's in everyone’s interest to make sure communities across America have access to robust broadband networks that deliver high-speed connectivity to all: “We are all here because we recognize that broadband is the indispensable infrastructure of our 21st-century economy and democracy."
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Bill Nelson, D-Fla., touted his concept of a “Title X” addition to the Communications Act in Florida Monday before Comptel members. He defended bipartisan negotiation on net neutrality legislation just as House Republicans introduced what is widely seen as an aggressive and partisan resolution to trample the FCC’s net neutrality order, a move that some have said runs counter to any potential bipartisan net neutrality legislative negotiating in the Commerce committees. When considering net neutrality and any rewrite of the act, Nelson has invoked the concept of this hypothetical section of telecom law since November.
USTelecom filed another appeal of the FCC’s net neutrality order, as expected, Monday, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to declare it “unlawful.” The commission’s “overreach is not only legally unsustainable” but “unwise given the enormous success of the commission’s [Communications Act] Title I approach for consumers, businesses and Internet entrepreneurs,” USTelecom President Walter McCormick said in a statement. USTelecom and Alamo Broadband (see 1503230066) filed appeals March 23 in the D.C. and 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals respectively under a theory that a 10-day deadline for appeals to be eligible for a lottery to determine which circuit will hear the cases ended that day.
The FCC net neutrality order is to be published in the Federal Register Monday. That means the FCC will know soon which major players will challenge the order in court, industry officials said Friday. CTIA, USTelecom and possibly NCTA are expected to lead the charge against the order, which reclassifies broadband as a Title II service under the Communications Act (see 1503300055).