TiVo’s $500 million settlement with EchoStar highlights the strength of its patents, bolstering its position as a fall court trial with AT&T and Verizon looms, said CEO Tom Rogers in a conference call. The settlement, combined with the $100 million Dish paid earlier, has produced $600 million for TiVo, company officials said. EchoStar abandoned the seven-year legal fight and reached agreement after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said it was in contempt of a lower court injunction (CED April 21 p1) barring it from selling DVR/satellite receivers that infringed TiVo’s so-called time-warp patent. In the settlement, TiVo will get about $11 million per quarter over a seven-year period, Chief Financial Officer Anna Brunelle said. The company received $175.7 million from EchoStar in Q1.
On May 16, 2011, BAE Systems PLC (BAES), of the United Kingdom, entered into a civil settlement with the State Department and will pay an aggregate $79 million civil penalty for alleged violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. A policy of denial will also be imposed on three BAES non-U.S. subsidiaries.
The International Trade Commission has announced the institution of antidumping and countervailing duty injury investigations regarding high pressure steel cylinders from China that are provided for in HTS subheading 7311.00.00.
Staff in the office of FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker was lobbied on more than a dozen occasions by Comcast, the NCTA, cable company rivals, nonprofit groups and others as she considered a job offer at Comcast, agency records show. Since April 18, when Baker privately recused herself from voting on anything at the FCC (CD May 16 p7), the lawyers who advise her also were visited by executives of AT&T, the CTIA, News Corp., Verizon and other companies and public interest groups. Baker’s not the first FCC member to directly leave for a large company regulated by the agency, though it’s been decades since that’s believed to have last occurred, said several who have long watched the commission.
Staff in the office of FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker was lobbied on more than a dozen occasions by Comcast, the NCTA, cable company rivals, nonprofit groups and others as she considered a job offer at Comcast, agency records show. Since April 18, when Baker privately recused herself from voting on anything at the FCC (WID May 16 p9), the lawyers who advise her also were visited by executives of AT&T, the CTIA, News Corp., Verizon and other companies and public interest groups. Baker’s not the first FCC member to directly leave for a large company regulated by the agency, though it’s been decades since that’s believed to have last occurred, said several who have long watched the commission.
"Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and believes that none of its products infringe” on a patent owned by Longview, Texas, company Ogma that’s at the heart of a complaint Ogma filed at the U.S. International Trade Commission, a Nintendo of America spokesman said Monday. The commission, acting on Ogma’s complaint, has opened an investigation of “certain motion-sensitive sound effects devices and image display devices and components and products,” it said Friday.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated version of its spreadsheet of ACE ESAR A2.2 (Initial Entry Types) programming issues.
The International Trade Commission has instituted a section 337 patent-based investigation1 of certain motion-sensitive sound effects devices and image display devices and components and products containing same, pursuant to a complaint.
The State Department has issued a final rule, effective August 15, 2011, to amend Parts 124 and 126 of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) to exempt from approval requirements, under certain conditions, intra-company, intra-government, and intra-organization transfers of defense articles to dual country or third-country national employees.
On April 12, 2011, the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia ruled against the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, stating that a document submitted during negotiating sessions of the Free Trade Agreement of the America's (FTAA) is not exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as it would not harm U.S. national security interests.