The Chinese Embassy in Washington released a 1,300-word statement Thursday accusing U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer of “slander” for alleging that China uses unfair trade practices to gain advantages over its U.S. trade competitors. In announcing a new round of proposed 10 percent Trade Act Section 301 tariffs Tuesday on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods (see 1807110034), Lighthizer called China’s trade practices “an existential threat to America’s most critical comparative advantage and the future of our economy.” The retaliatory actions China took in response to the tariffs that took effect July 6 were "without any international legal basis or justification," said Lighthizer. The Chinese shot back, calling Lighthizer’s statement “a distortion of facts” and his accusations “groundless.” Any “underlying problems in the American economy and society are purely caused by domestic, structural reasons in the US,” said the embassy. China since February “engaged in four rounds of high-level economic talks with the US,” and reached “important consensus” on “strengthening trade and economic cooperation and avoiding a trade war,” it said. “But due to domestic politics, the US has gone back on its words, brazenly abandoned the bilateral consensus, and insisted on fighting a trade war with China. China has done its utmost to prevent the escalation of trade frictions. The United States is fully responsible for the current situation.” The tariffs the Trump administration implemented or proposed are “typical unilateralism, protectionism and trade bullying,” and are a “clear violation” of the basic World Trade Organization “principle of most-favored-nation treatment as well as the basic spirit and principles of international law,” said the embassy. That China was “forced to take” retaliatory “counteractions” against the tariffs was “an inevitable choice to defend national interest and global interest, and is perfectly rightful, reasonable and lawful," it said. Lighthizer's office didn't comment.
Dozens of models of LG smartphones and other devices willfully infringe four WiLAN patents on 4G wireless technology, the intellectual property licensing firm alleged in a complaint (in Pacer) filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Diego. WiLAN “was the first company in the world to build Wi-Fi and 4G data speeds into mobile devices, with speeds reaching up to 100 Mbps, and did so "a decade before 4G would become the standard in the wireless industry,” said the firm. LG’s infringement gives it “an unfair advantage” over its competitors, “many of whom have chosen to do the right thing” and license their use of WiLAN’s wireless technologies and patents, it said. WiLAN made “numerous efforts” unsuccessfully to license the technology to LG, but the company uses WiLAN’s 4G technologies “without paying anything,” it said. LG declined comment.
The developer of the radio industry’s NextRadio FM smartphone app conceded Thursday it's no closer to swaying Apple to unlock FM chips in its iPhones but vowed it won't stop lobbying the company on NextRadio support (see 1701060004). “No, we are not any closer,” Ryan Hornaday, Emmis Communications chief financial officer, emailed us Thursday. Other broadcasters and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai have unsuccessfully urged Apple on the issue (see 1709280060). That company “controls the real estate inside their phones and has simply been unwilling to activate the FM chip, despite it being in their phones,” said Hornaday. “Apple always weathers this storm" of public opinion and "refuses to budge," he continued. "We will not give up the fight, but we are not winning.” Apple didn’t comment. NextRadio is giving the radio industry “a remarkable opportunity for data attribution” to enhance selling advertising, said Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan on a Thursday earnings call. The radio station owner is “far along in discussions in changing the focus of NextRadio, with significant input and partnership from major radio broadcasters,” he said. Emmis and its radio industry "brethren" believe strongly that "if we can provide rich data analytics" to advertisers, "we can regain the strength" that radio had, even in the face of digital competition from Google and Facebook, said Smulyan. Radio historically has had the unique advantage of providing “audio messages” that “really lock into people’s heads, but because of the rich data attribution characteristics of Google and Facebook, that advantage has been lost,” he said.
Tech interests fear ripple-effect consumer harms that may result from the Trump administration’s newest proposals to impose 10 percent Trade Act Section 301 tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports over intellectual property disagreements between the countries. The list of goods targeted for the 10 percent duties, released Tuesday in an Office of the U.S. Trade Representative notice, doesn't include meaningful end-user consumer tech products like TVs. Some networking gear was included, drawing concern from Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, CompTIA, CTA, the Information Technology Industry Council and Telecommunications Industry Association.
CTA, the Semiconductor Industry Association and others asked the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to appear at a July 24 hearing to oppose 25 percent Trade Action Section 301 tariffs on more Chinese-sourced products related to alleged IP practices (see 1806150030), docket USTR-2018-0018 shows. CTA members identified 22 Harmonized Tariffs Schedule codes on the new tariffs list covering $6.6 billion worth of products they imported from China in 2017, said Sage Chandler, vice president-international trade. Chinese companies “export almost no semiconductors to the U.S. market,” said David Isaacs, SIA vice president-government affairs. Most U.S.semiconductor imports from China "are semiconductors designed and manufactured in the United States, and then shipped to China for the final stage of semiconductor fabrication,” accounting for 10-15 percent “of the value of the final product,” he said. Written comments are due July 23, post-hearing rebuttal comments July 31.
Under the HDR10+ licensing program (see 1806200047), the Fox-Panasonic-Samsung consortium running the program had a strong rationale for requiring TV makers to submit their sets to third-party certification, while Blu-ray player and over-the-top set-top manufacturers self-certify, Bill Mandel, Samsung Research America vice president-industry relations, told us at last week’s Advanced Display Summit in West Hollywood, California (see 1806280006). The Blu-ray Disc Association “is just a gigantic organization that’s been around forever and they’re making really commodity products,” said Mandel, Samsung’s HDR10+ project manager. For a “source device” like a Blu-ray player or OTT box to be capable of HDR10+, “it needs to be able to generate that VSIF data,” said Mandel of vendor-specific information field protocol. “That would have to be programmed into the firmware.” For a TV, “it needs to understand that that VSIF is coming,” he said. Products lacking that protocol will need to get a firmware update to enable them to render HDR10+, said Mandel. “We’re already running the Amazon protocol” to enable the sets to render the display of Amazon Prime content in HDR10+, he said. Samsung’s 2018 TVs are “already compatible with Amazon,” he said.
Sony Mobile Communications smartwatches and “smart bands” that use Google’s Wear OS platform violate a U.S. patent in the way they communicate with other devices, alleged a complaint (in Pacer) filed Sunday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Beck Branch, a Plano, Texas, limited liability company, owns a March 2005 patent (No. 6,873,620) that describes a communication server acting as a gateway for the transmission of messages between two virtual devices communicating with networks implementing different protocols. The complaint against Sony was one of six actions Beck Branch filed Sunday in the same court alleging infringement of the same patent. Other defendants and their allegedly infringing products or services: (1) Blue Jeans Network (in Pacer), which operates a cloud-based platform for internet-protocol-based communication; (2) Polycom (in Pacer), which markets a unified communications software platform for open standards-based communication, including session initiation protocol (SIP); (3) Motorola Mobility (in Pacer), for its Wear OS smartwatches and fitness bands; (4) Unify (in Pacer), which markets OpenScape as a hybrid unified communications platforms for IP-based communication, including SIP-based communication; (5) Vonage (in Pacer), marketer of unified communications services based on cloud public branch exchange protocol. Defendants didn’t comment Monday.
Smart home device ownership “continues to explode,” doubling to 20 percent of U.S. internet homes in April from November 2015, Stephen Baker, NPD vice president-industry analysis, told the ATSC 3.0 Midwest Next-Gen TV Summit in Columbus, Ohio. Voice-activated speakers are the “first intelligent product in many consumer homes,” said Baker, citing data from a Connected Intelligence survey, with ownership doubling to 20 percent of U.S. homes in Q2 from the same 2017 quarter. TVs are “dramatically more connected,” said Baker Thursday. NPD estimates 63 million U.S. homes owned 210 million smart TVs at the end of 2017, an increase of 21 million homes and 108 million devices in four years, he said. Sixty-three percent of U.S. homes owning at least one 4K TV have “enough bandwidth” to stream 4K video content, said Baker, due to “faster tier broadband plans.” NPD estimates 16.3 percent of internet homes in the U.S. were 4K streaming-capable in February, said Baker. Having passed from the early adopter to the early majority stage of new technology acceptance, 4K streaming-capable internet homes are poised to reach mainstream proportions, he said.
The HDR10+ Technologies company of Fox, Panasonic and Samsung took six months longer than expected to begin licensing its HDR platform “because it was lot more difficult than I think we anticipated putting a certification program together,” Samsung's Bill Mandel told a company-sponsored event Wednesday in West Hollywood, California. A week after starting the certification program (see 1806200047), HDR10+ has no formal “adopters,” but “there’s a full list of companies already requesting” technical materials as the first step toward acquiring a license, said Mandel, Samsung’s HDR10+ project manager. “Everyone’s very sensitive about which TVs will pass” the HDR10+ certification tests, “and how, and so every parameter was went over with a very fine-toothed comb,” said Mandel. All HDR content shown on the Amazon Prime service since December has been rendered in HDR10+ using Colorfront cloud-based mastering tools, said Mandel. “There’s more hours than I know how to count” of HDR10+ content on Amazon Prime, he said.
Amazon Technologies got a U.S. patent Tuesday for a system of detecting “hostile takeover” of drones and returning them to friendly hands. As drone use increases, "so does the likelihood” of hostile takeovers, said the patent, naming Glen Larsen, an Amazon hardware and systems architect, as its inventor. "Nefarious individuals and/or systems may be able to obtain control” of the drones by hacking communication signals, it said. During normal-operating “mission” mode, the device receives a “heartbeat signal from a controller,” it said. If a preset timer expires without the drone receiving a new heartbeat signal, the device automatically switches into a “safety” mode in which it “performs one or more preprogrammed actions designed to reestablish communication with the controller” or lands safely, said the patent.