“ISP confusion” is a reason RIAA is offering more carrot and less stick in efforts to settle with those it accuses of file sharing, the trade group said in a leaked, blacked-out letter to ISPs from Exec. Vp Steve Marks. Proposed changes - - which require ISP cooperation -- came from discussions with infringement suit targets, the group said. But the promise of a reward to forsake legal counsel and a data-retention provision in the letter have some RIAA critics calling foul. RIAA declined comment or to confirm the letter’s authenticity, which bears a 2007 date but the day and month are blacked out.
The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued a notice announcing that it is revoking the antidumping (AD) and/or countervailing (CV) duty orders on certain corrosion-resistant carbon steel flat products from Australia, Canada, Japan, France.
At a March public hearing, the International Trade Commission (ITC) will set penalties against Qualcomm for infringing a Broadcom patent. In Dec., the ITC upheld an administrative law judge’s decision that Qualcomm violated a Broadcom patent for a technology that helps wireless phones conserve battery power when out of cellular range. Qualcomm is happy to come to the hearing, it said. “We welcome the opportunity to demonstrate the unreasonable, overreaching and anticompetitive nature of what Broadcom is seeking,” Lou Lupin, gen. counsel, said: “Industry partners, who Broadcom deliberately attempted to exclude from the ITC proceeding while targeting their products, and other interested government, industry and public interest organizations will have the opportunity to show the harmful impact Broadcom’s requests would have on millions of consumers by depriving them of wireless broadband services.” The remedy hearing may be the first the ITC has held in its growing patent docket, Stifel Nicolaus said in a research note, noting that the case was the subject of a Wall Street Journal editorial and an FCC filing, “both warning the ITC of dire consequences of banning imports of CDMA 3G handsets.” Injunctions are nearly automatic in ITC patent infringement decisions, which the President can veto, though vetoes are rare, the analysts said. “The question here will be the scope of the injunction,” Stifel Nicolaus said: “The ITC’s decision to postpone the decision and hold a hearing could signal an openness to overturning the ALJ recommendation to keep the scope of the injunction very narrow. But we expect a full court press against the broader remedy.”
Online payment company GreenZap wants $57.5 million in damages and an injunction against allegedly defamatory bloggers and their Web hosts. GreenZap filed suit Tues. against blog GreenZapScam.com, and Web hosts Liquid Web and Vodien. The suit is the “first of many” the PayPal provider is preparing against bloggers and hosting companies that damaged GreenZap’s reputation, GreenZap said. The blogs created a “cloud of mistrust” that GreenZap has been forced to deal with daily with consumers and strategic partners, GreenZap Vp Linda Murphy said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted to its Web site a frequently asked question (FAQ) document which reflects CBP's current thinking on its draft proposal1 to require 10 additional data elements from importers 24 hours prior to foreign lading and 2 data sets from ocean carriers (also referred to as Security Filing (SF) and the 10+2 proposal).
The RIAA got a qualified rebuke from an Okla. court for the “appearance” that the trade group initiated secondary infringement claims against an innocent defendant to spur a settlement, after RIAA went after her daughter as the “primary” infringer. U.S. Dist. Court, Oklahoma City, Judge Lee West granted the defense motion in Capitol v. Foster for attorney’s fees but left the exact amount to further discovery. Marilyn Barringer-Thomson, attorney for mother Debbie Foster, submitted an itemized bill for about $50,000 in attorney’s fees (WID Aug 28 p1), but West allowed her to “supplement” her request -- probably to account for the past several months of work on the case. An RIAA spokeswoman told us the group was reviewing the opinion and believed West “got it wrong,” but hadn’t decided how to proceed.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted to its Web site another revised (February 2007) version of its Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on e-Manifest" (electronic manifest).
The RIAA got a qualified rebuke from an Okla. court for the “appearance” that the trade group initiated secondary infringement claims against an innocent defendant to spur a settlement, after RIAA went after her daughter as the “primary” infringer.
The International Trade Administration (ITA) and the International Trade Commission (ITC) have each issued a notice initiating five-year Sunset Reviews on the above-listed antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duty orders.
BERKELEY, Cal. -- Antitrust authorities should let standards-development groups adopt strong rules to curb patent holders, a standards body said. The group, the VMEBus International Trade Assn. (VITA), got DoJ’s blessing in the fall for rules that VITA outside counsel Robert Skitol told us are the strictest known of their kind. DoJ said the proposed rules would benefit competition, so the Dept. wouldn’t fight them under a Sherman Act ban on price fixing. VITA said last week that members adopted the rules 35-2.