In its ongoing pursuit of blank CD patent infringement before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), Philips said it will ask the ITC to review and reverse a Nov. 5 decision by an administrative law judge that challenged the company’s right to sue as agent for a patent-pool of CD-R developers. Last year, Philips filed patent infringement charges with the ITC against 17 blank CD vendors from Hong Kong and Taiwan that it alleged were not licensed by the Philips/Sony/Taiyo Yuden patent pool, and which had not been paying royalties to the group. Philips called the judge’s ruling “erroneous” and said “there are valid and persuasive legal arguments” to reverse it. “Numerous patent license programs of the type in this ITC case, in which one or more companies offer a license under a collection of patents that are complimentary and necessarily used in the manufacture of a product, have been previously reviewed and approved by the Anti-Trust Division of the U.S. Justice Department as being pro-competitive,” Philips said. The ITC is scheduled to resolve the case in Feb.

Among the issues with which federal spectrum users are grappling as part of an interagency task force is whether there should be some form of Executive Branch oversight when differences arise on thorny policy issues, acting NTIA Dir. Michael Gallagher said Wed. President Bush in June created a task force to recommend how to stimulate more efficient spectrum use by federal customers. The next step the Bush directive set, which involves private sector input, will begin shortly and use the FCC’s Spectrum Policy Task Force report as a starting point, Gallagher told us.

The lack of patent licenses and failure to pay royalties on DVD players earned expulsions for 6 Chinese manufacturers from the country’s largest trade fair last week.

Acclaim Entertainment said in an SEC filing late last week that its 2nd-quarter revenue dropped to $41.3 million from $54.1 million a year ago but it narrowed its loss to $4 million (-4? per diluted share) from $28.2 million (-31?). Details weren’t disclosed.

First round of legal squabble between game publishers Electronic Arts (EA) and Ubisoft was won by latter but there appeared to be long battle ahead. Quebec Court of Appeal upheld injunction preventing former Ubisoft employees at Montreal studio that developed hit game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell from working at EA’s new studio in same city. Ubisoft argued that 4 employees who worked on game had noncompetition clauses in their contracts that required them to wait one year before working for N. American competitor. Ubisoft spokeswoman said “the first hearing on the case happened last week” and “it looks like the case will go to court in February.”

The SEC settled with 4 people, including a former Univision employee and Hispanic Bcstg. Corp. dir., in an insider trading case involving the companies’ stock. The SEC had filed a civil fraud suit in U.S. Dist. Court, Dallas, against Stephen White, William White III, Ernest Bieling and Robert Hughes, who used to be a board member of HBC. The SEC charged that the defendants had purchased or advised others to purchase shares of HBC common stock based on material nonpublic information that Univision would acquire HBC in an all-stock transaction. Simultaneously, the SEC accepted offers of settlement from the defendants in which they agreed, without admitting or denying the allegations, to the entry of an order enjoining them from further violations of the securities laws, to collectively pay civil money penalties of $224,078 and to collectively disgorge $218,683 in illegal profits, plus $13,192 in prejudgment interest.

Media watchdog Commercial Alert filed complaints this week with the FCC and FTC, arguing that broadcasters were violating federal law by failing to prominently identify product placement techniques as advertising. “Advertisers can puff and tout and use all the many tricks of their trade, but they must not pretend that their ads are something else,” Gary Ruskin, exec. dir of Commercial Alert, wrote in the complaint to the FCC. Commercial Alert said networks, by failing to prominently identify product placements as advertising, “broadly and systematically” violate the Communications Act.

The 4 largest U.S. wireless carriers outlined a relatively bleak picture for the FCC this week of how negotiations were going with other carriers, particularly LECs, for wireless local number portability (LNP). On coordination efforts with wireline carriers, AT&T Wireless told the FCC it “has been unable to negotiate successfully a single agreement with a wireline carrier.” Sprint said while it expected to be LNP ready by a Nov. 24 FCC deadline, it had received “mixed cooperation” from other carriers, leaving it worried over the prospects of its ability to port numbers with many carriers by the deadline.

U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., upheld constitutionality of federal Harbor Maintenance Tax (HMT), rejecting appeal filed by Thomson Multimedia. Thomson sought to reverse Court of International Trade (CIT) decision last year that HMT was constitutional as it applied to imports, which in this case were TV sets. HMT was enacted as part of Water Resources Development Act of 1986 and was intended to help fund maintenance and improvement at U.S. ports. HMT imposes charge of 0.125% of value of commercial cargo that’s unloaded in port. In its appeal, Thomson, which pays more than $1 million in HMTs annually, argued among other things that law violated Uniformity Clause of Constitution because it exempted Alaska and Hawaii, 47.5-mile stretch of Columbia River and inland waterways. Thomson contended that HMT as it applied to imports and domestic unloadings didn’t “correlate reliably with the federal harbor services used or usable.” But court said HMT, as it applied to imports and domestic unloadings, wasn’t tax, but rather was user fee that couldn’t be applied under Uniformity Clause. Appeals court, while saying HMT was “imperfect in application,” held that charges were based on “fair approximation of the cost of the benefits provided for port users.” It also said HMT wasn’t excessive in relation to costs incurred by federal govt. While Thomson also said HMT violated Port Preference Clause of Constitution by favoring one port over another, appeals court said company’s “logic is flawed.” It said that “exemptions at issue here are not the sort of preference prohibited” by Port Preference Clause. Thomson spokesman declined comment on decision, but noted that company had disputed fees paid in “certain” U.S. ports for several years. Thomson was subject of U.S. Customs probe that included search of Tube Div.’s Scranton, Pa., hq in Jan. 1998. Investigation was believed to have focused on 31-32” tubes imported from Italy and loss of customs revenue due to transfer pricing. Case was later settled.

Shanghai court ruled in favor of 3 U.S. studios in piracy suit against 2 local businesses charged with selling pirated movies on DVD. Cases were first of kind in which studios directly sued resellers of movies replicated without authorization on DVDs, and marked heightened efforts by content owners to police copyrights in notoriously lax Chinese market.