Summit Wireless CEO Brett Moyer pushed product breadth and a low barrier to entry for the company’s Wireless Speaker and Audio Association home theater technology, on a Thursday virtual investor road show. Summit hopes to broaden the customer base for the 24-bit/96kHz surround-sound standard to the entry level, pitching ease of setup in a wireless configuration.
World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said there is now political support to move forward on an agreement to curb subsidies that lead to overfishing. The draft text has been blessed by all the heads of delegations in Geneva, she said in a news conference July 15.
The following are short summaries of recent CBP “NY” rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
European Union candidate countries of North Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania along with the European Free Trade Association nations of Iceland and Norway aligned their sanctions regimes with that of the European Union on Belarus, the European Council said in a July 13 news release. The newest wave of sanctions on Belarus banned the sale, transfer or export of dual-use goods and technologies for military use to anyone in Belarus (see 2106250009). The sanctions concern the May 23 forced landing of a Ryanair flight and subsequent arrest of journalist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega.
President Joe Biden’s executive order on promoting competitiveness in the U.S. economy (see 2107090010) directed Health and Human Services to propose rules by early November to create a category of affordable over-the-counter hearing aids for consumers with mild or moderate hearing loss. But CTA’s efforts to land approval of a certification mark identifying OTC hearing aids compliant with a 2017 industry performance standard appear to be running out of time at the Patent and Trademark Office. CTA is entitled by July 27 to request a fifth and final six-month deadline extension for filing a statement of use on the logo, but risks abandonment of the application if it produces no SOU by late January. SOUs, the last step in the registration process, describe how conditionally approved trademarks are being deployed commercially. PTO requires them to prevent applicants from hoarding trademarks, but CTA is hamstrung from filing the SOU because no categories of OTC hearing aids can exist before the Food and Drug Administration approves final rules creating them. The statutory deadline for proposing OTC rules under the FDA Reauthorization Act of 2017 is nearly a year overdue. “Creating the rules for OTC hearing aids so consumers can benefit from lower-cost options is most important,” emailed Brian Markwalter, CTA senior vice president-research and standards. CTA and its members created ANSI/CTA-2051, the Personal Sound Amplification Performance Criteria Standard, “to provide performance metrics and target values for OTC hearing aids that could work alongside and support FDA rules,” said Markwalter on Monday. “We will take up the need for a certification mark based on the CTA standard with our members as the rulemaking process unfolds.” Section 709 of the 2017 statute gave the FDA three years from date of enactment to propose OTC rules. The agency last summer blamed COVID-19 workloads for missing the Aug. 18, 2020, deadline, but said then that OTC hearing aids remained "a priority" (see 2008200024). Section 709 is silent on how long the rulemaking's notice and comment period should last, but requires the FDA to publish final rules creating the OTC category no later than 180 days after comments close.
Commissioners OK’d modifying FCC rules for the $1.9 billion program for removing Huawei and ZTE gear from carrier networks 4-0 Tuesday, as expected (see 2107070052). Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced an Oct. 29 “target date” for opening this window. “Carriers can start planning for their applications and their new networks." she said: "There’s a lot of work to do."
A group of surety associations should not be able to argue against when the six-year limitations period begins for a customs bond due to their role in "abetting the new shipper bond disaster," a group of domestic agricultural goods producers said in a July 8 amicus brief in the Court of International Trade. The brief was filed to oppose the surety associations' motion to intervene in the lawsuit (United States v. American Home Assurance Company, CIT #20-00175).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated July 2 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The FCC Public Safety Bureau sought comment by July 30, replies Aug. 16, on an application by the Augusta-Richmond County, Georgia, consolidated government to upgrade its private land mobile radio network. The locality proposes to add a new 800 MHz specialized mobile radio pool channel (857.6375 MHz) to six simulcast base station repeater sites.
Apple TV+ has a tab on Roku remote controls, reported the New York Post Wednesday, saying it’s the first time Apple has put its branding on a competitor’s hardware. It showed a photo from Roku’s landing page with Apple TV+, Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu direct-access tabs on the remote included with the Roku Ultra player. Other remotes on Roku’s website showed Sling instead of Apple, and still others had all buttons blacked out. A Roku Express 4K remote at Bestbuy.com Wednesday also showed buttons for Netflix, Disney+, AppleTV+ and Hulu. A Roku spokesperson said Wednesday the company doesn’t comment on partnership activities. Apple didn’t respond to questions.