Bill Would Mean Lots of Money for Giants: AT&T, Time Warner Unite to Push Lawmakers
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By Alan Johnson, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio  Jun. 3--A proposed state law expanding Ohioans' cable-video service options stretches 29 pages. But it can be summarized in just two words: big bucks.
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After weeks of negotiations, the U.S. Senate could take action this week on a bill that would make it easier to sue "peer-to-peer" networks like Kazaa and LimeWire that allow users to copy music and movies over the Internet.
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Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp.  were hard at work this week trying to decide how they would  divvy up Adelphia Communications Corp.'s cable systems if they  win a bid for the bankrupt cable company's assets, a source  familiar with the matter said on Friday.
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Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill on Friday that would more than double taxes on the pay of managers of private equity funds, hedge funds and other investment partnerships.
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Executives and lobbyists from some  of America's richest and most influential companies are walking  the halls of Congress, buttonholing senators to argue for  strong patents to preserve U.S. innovation.
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Companies on both sides of a patent overhaul debate in the U.S. Congress are stepping up the pressure on lawmakers, as some observers expect a vote soon in the Senate.Two groups, one supporting patent legislation before the Senate and one against it, held dueling media briefings on patent reform on Capitol Hill Thursday. Members of the Coalition for Patent Fairness, including lawyers from Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, and SAP, said they see broad support for the Patent Reform Act in the Senate and hope senators will soon&#160;follow the House of Representatives&#39; lead and pass the bill.The coalition sent a letter to Senate leaders Wednesday, calling on them to pass the Patent Reform Act. The bill will &quot;benefit all American workers and American consumers,&quot; said the letter, signed by 128 companies and organizations, including Amazon, Dell, eBay, and Intel.But another group, the Innovation Alliance, sent a letter to Senate leaders Tuesday urging them to reject the legislation.&quot;No compelling case has been made for a bill written in this fashion,&quot; read the Innovation Alliance letter, signed by 430 companies and organizations. &quot;It is based on claims of a crisis in the current patent system that does not exist, supported by selective assertions which do not hold up under scrutiny.&quot;Among the companies and organizations signing the Innovation Alliance letter were the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA, the NanoBusiness Alliance, Cargill, Coca-Cola, and Qualcomm.Both the House and Senate versions of the Patent Reform Act would overhaul the U.S. patent system, but two pieces of the legislation have generated the most controversy. The bills would create a new way to challenge patents after they&#39;ve been granted, and it would allow courts to change the way they assess damages in patent-infringement cases.Currently, courts generally consider the value of the entire product when a small piece of the product infringes a patent. The legislation would allow courts to base damages only on the value of the infringing piece.Those changes would create uncertainty about the validity of patents and drive venture capital money away from innovative companies, said Joe Kiani, CEO of Masimo, a medical equipment vendor in Irvine, Calif.Combined with recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings, including one limiting the use of injunctions by plaintiffs in patent infringement lawsuits, the Patent Reform Act would significantly decrease the value of many patents, argued Kiani and other participants in an Innovation Alliance forum.The bill &quot;opens the way for other countries like China to bring technology here that will be a fraction of the cost and will be copies of our technology,&quot; Kiani said.Panelists at the Innovation Alliance forum said they&#39;d support patent reform that gives more money to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), allowing examiners to better research patent applications. &quot;We support prudent patent reform,&quot; said Sean Murdock, executive director of the NanoBusiness Alliance, a trade group representing nanotech companies. &quot;Simply stated, the current bill, in its current form, is not prudent.&quot;But members of the Coalition for Patent Reform, in a press briefing a couple of hours later, said Congress needs to fix problems with &quot;patent speculators&quot; suing established companies. The Supreme Court rulings and more money for the USPTO aren&#39;t enough, said Tim Crean, chief intellectual property officer for SAP.In the past two years, the Supreme Court has ruled on several patent issues, including a case involving eBay. In May 2006, the court overturned a long-term U.S. court practice of issuing injunctions against infringing products in nearly all patent cases.Despite the Supreme Court rulings, the number of patent lawsuits continues to grow, said Crean and Michael Holston, general counsel for HP. This year is shaping up to be a record year for patent lawsuits, Holston said.The coalition found about 625 patent lawsuits in 20 selected U.S. district courts in 1990. Through Sept. 30, the same 20 courts have seen about 1,550 patent lawsuits in 2007, the coalition said.HP will spend about $75 million defending against patent lawsuits this year, Holston said. More than half of those lawsuits come from patent &quot;speculators&quot; -- companies that buy patents for the purpose of filing lawsuits, he added.The patent system is &quot;being exploited through litigation games,&quot; added Mark Chandler, general counsel for Cisco.
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Some U.S. lawmakers want wireless networks to be opened up to new devices and applications, and they questioned expensive early termination fees on wireless service contracts.
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U.S. senators questioned Thursday whether members of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission plan to enforce merger conditions that AT&T Inc. agreed to in its December acquisition of BellSouth Corp.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Congress still needs to deal with network neutrality, and supporters in Congress are willing to block any legislation favored by broadband providers until the issue is resolved, a leading Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday. "Network neutrality is a large, unresolved debate," said Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, speaking at the State of the 'Net Conference in Washington, D.C. "It's [the Internet's] open and accessible policy that has enabled it to be a platform of innovation." A net neutrality law, which would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors,Â stalled in Congress in 2006, and large broadband providers, such as AT&T and Verizon, opposed efforts to pass a law. But net neutrality advocates -- many of them part of the Democratic majority that now controls both houses of Congress -- would block any legislation requested by the large broadband providers until a net neutrality compromise is hammered out, Boucher predicted. Last year, AT&T and Verizon pushed for a new law that would streamline the franchising process they must go through to offer television over IP service in competition with cable TV. But this year, the large broadband providers have largely backed off on their lobbying efforts, and Boucher suggested that's because Democrats will demand a net neutrality law as a trade-off for any legislation that benefits providers. Boucher supports a net neutrality law, but he called for compromise. Congress should not pass a net neutrality law with "unintended consequences" that hurt the development of the Internet, he said. "I don't want to do anything ... that has the effect of hobbling innovation inside the network," he added. Other speakers at the conference, sponsored by the bipartisan Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus, suggested a net neutrality law would hurt efforts to increase broadband adoption in the U.S. A net neutrality law would limit broadband providers' options for providing new services, said George Ford, chief economist at the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies, a free-market-focused think tank. "We should exercise discipline," Ford said. "We rarely do that with communications policy." Other speakers argued there's little evidence of broadband providers blocking competitors' Web content, a scenario net neutrality advocates want to prevent. "Economic change and technological change need room to breathe," said Christopher Yoo, a tech law professor at Vanderbilt University. If broadband providers eventually take action that harms customers and competition, then Congress should pass a law, Yoo said. Yoo and David Farber, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, argued that broadband providers need the ability to block Internet content such as spam and to shut down Web applications that hog bandwidth. Providers should also be allowed to prioritize Web applications such as video or voice, allowing customers to have a high quality of service, Farber said. "If you try to get quality of service for everyone, you don't get quality of service," Farber said. But Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University Law School, said providers should only block Web content in the most extreme circumstances. The difference between "good blocking" and "bad blocking" depends on the user's perspective, he said. "Blocking should be highly suspect," Wu added. "We say good blocking is good and bad blocking is bad, but so does the Chinese government. They're making bad decisions at the center [of the network]."
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The Super Bowl-winning Giants are picking up a lot of new fans Â even in the U.S. Senate.
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Worth watching Time Warner Cable is experimenting with a high-speed internet service that would bill customers based on the amount of bandwidth they consume rather than by flat fee.â¦
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A House Republican is pushing a measure that echoes a long-sought Bush administration goal: to require all Internet service providers to keep records on their subscribers.
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Two GOP lawmakers, South Carolina's Graham and Arizona's Kyl, take a calculated risk in backing the Senate bill.
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The U.S. Federal Communications  Commission this week hopes to do what Congress could not  accomplish this year -- help AT&T Inc. and Verizon  Communications get into the television business faster.
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The U.S. Federal Communications  Commission this week hopes to do what Congress could not  accomplish this year -- help AT&T Inc.  and Verizon  Communications  get into the television business faster.
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WHATEVER VOICE towns and cities have in their cable television service will be at stake in a bill before the state Legislature tomorrow.
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Should the cable giants fight the urge to splurge on ailing Adelphia?