The House Judiciary and Senate Judiciary committees ended May with four separate bills under consideration that would address a series of issues related to abusive patent litigation that the America Invents Act (AIA) was not able to address. A fifth bill is waiting in the wings. Officials from industry groups that have been pushing for the reforms told us the current versions of the bills offer great ideas and starting points for discussion, but also believe a definitive solution will require more work.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology hopes its second cybersecurity framework workshop will conclude with an “initial consensus” on standards to be included in the industry-developed framework, said Director Patrick Gallagher Wednesday. NIST expects participants at the event, which is being webcast and continues through Friday at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, to begin creating the initial set of standards, best practices and procedures that will be included in the voluntary framework. NIST and the Department of Homeland Security are leading development of the framework as directed by President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity executive order (CD Feb 14 p1). The participants will also begin identifying themes that cut across the different critical infrastructure sectors that are involved in the framework’s development. Participants will base their discussions on the comments NIST collected in its initial request for information, as well as a NIST analysis of those comments that identifies common themes and issues (http://1.usa.gov/10u8IYf). It’s important that the workshop result in a “best in class” initial consensus because the workshop’s output will directly affect what’s discussed at the next workshop, scheduled to run from July 10-12 at the University of California, San Diego, Gallagher said. “These workshops must build on each other.” NIST hopes the July workshop will be able to focus on selecting framework components, said Adam Sedgewick, NIST senior information technology policy advisor. A fourth workshop, to occur in September, will help finalize what’s included in the draft framework that goes public in October, he said. While there will eventually need to be a consensus on the entire framework, “not all of the discussions this week will meet with unanimous consent,” Gallagher said. A lack of consensus in some areas is fine, however, because “the framework will be better if we bring in all viewpoints” at this stage in its development, he said. NIST’s role is only to support the industry participants, not to “choose or develop particular standards or solutions,” Gallagher said. “This is your work product, not ours.”
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) approved Japan-based SoftBank’s bid to buy 70 percent ownership of Sprint Nextel, the two carriers confirmed Wednesday (http://bit.ly/117byQ5). The multi-agency committee decided there were no unresolved national security issues related to the deal, despite recent concerns voiced by lawmakers and another company competing for control of Sprint. The FCC’s review is the deal’s remaining regulatory barrier -- which Medley Global Advisors analyst Jeffrey Silva predicted will be removed “within days."
The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) second workshop to develop the Cybersecurity Framework, set to begin Wednesday, will delve deeper into actually creating the framework, industry officials said. NIST and the Department of Homeland Security are working with industries considered to be components of the U.S.’s critical infrastructure to draft the voluntary framework as directed by President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity executive order (CD Feb 14 p1). Participants are expected to begin creating the initial set of standards, best practices and procedures that will be included in the draft version of the Framework that’s expected to go public in October (http://1.usa.gov/Z5zzJD).
The World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF) ended last week with a consensus among participants on a set of non-binding documents on Internet-related issues (CD May 17 p3). The consensus at WTPF was in contrast to the rancorous end to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai in December. Industry insiders and experts told us it’s unclear if future binding talks on Internet governance issues will produce a consensus as easily.
Cisco is hopeful the FCC’s Wireline Bureau will decide “quickly and properly” that the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC) was incorrect in determining that audio communication portions of Cisco’s WebEx conferencing service should be considered a telecommunications service, Jeffrey Campbell, Cisco’s vice president-government affairs, told us.
Delegates to the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF) Thursday adopted by consensus a non-binding report by ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré and six opinions from the ITU-initiated Informal Experts Group (IEG) on Internet-related issues. That ended the conference after extensive debate on governments’ role in Internet governance. Delegates chose not to act during the conference on a seventh opinion, introduced by Brazil but also containing controversial Internet governance language from an earlier Russian Federation contribution, because they couldn’t reach a consensus in the allotted time. Touré told delegates at the end of the conference that he would send that opinion to the ITU Council Working Group on international Internet-related public policy issues (CWG-Internet), which will decide on the best forum for continuing the debate.
The FCC’s upcoming incentive auctions will continue to be one of the Office of Engineering and Technology’s top priorities during the agency’s leadership transition, said OET Chief Julius Knapp Wednesday during a National Spectrum Management Association (NSMA) conference. The FCC would work on the incentive auctions “no matter who the chairman is” because the auction preparatory process involves statutory requirements, he said. The FCC and OET will remain as dedicated as ever to making more spectrum available for use, and there is “every reason to expect” that will continue under new leadership, Knapp said. The Obama administration is also hoping to make additional spectrum available by freeing up a total of 500 MHz of federal spectrum by 2020.
The U.S. patent system is not entirely broken, but reforms beyond the America Invents Act (AIA) are needed to fix issues the system continues to face, a group of current and former federal judges said Tuesday at an event sponsored by the Federalist Society and George Mason University School of Law’s Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property. The judges credited AIA, which Congress passed in 2011, with helping improve conditions at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO).
The U.S. and ITU hope to return to a more consensus-based approach to international telecom and Internet policy Tuesday when the ITU convenes the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF), industry and government officials told us. WTPF is the ITU’s first major telecom summit since the controversial World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), which met in Dubai in December. The WCIT, convened to update the treaty-level International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), resulted in a series of fractious votes and a revised treaty that only 89 ITU member nations signed. The U.S. was among the 55 nations that did not sign the ITRs, citing the existence of Internet governance-related language within the ITRs and in an attached non-binding resolution. The U.S. remains a signatory of the original ITRs adopted in 1988 (CD Dec 17 p1). WTPF will also tackle Internet-related topics, but industry insiders told us it will be a far different conference than WCIT.