Link Roundup

By Garett Gorlitsky • February 3rd, 2012

In Washington, the House and the Senate backed competing spectrum incentive auction bills, which would encourage current licensees to sell their under-utilized frequencies at auction to wireless carriers.  Lawmakers in both chambers want to package it with the payroll tax extension, which is expected to pass before the end of February.  Former FCC Chairman Reed [...]

The FCC has filed its finalized net neutrality rules, set to take effect on November 20. The rules will almost certainly face legal challenges from Verizon and MetroPCS over the extent of the FCC’s jurisdiction. David Ignatius writes on legal uncertainty and difficult questions facing the future “rules of war” for drone strikes. The debate [...]

The latest links from STLR: Last week, the Justice Department filed suit in DC District court to block AT&T’s $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile, arguing that the merger violates antitrust laws. Sprint has since filed its own lawsuit in DC District court to block the proposed deal. The Senate debates the America Invents Act on [...]

The latest links from STLR: The Copyright Office released its latest group of exceptions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provision. Wired and cnet news report on the exception for jailbreaking mobile phones. Also in DMCA news, Ars Technica discusses the Fifth Circuit decision that bypassing technological protections to access software for a fair use does [...]

The latest on the STLR radar: Authorities in San Mateo, California, contemplate filing criminal charges in connection with the sale of an Apple prototype (of a new iPhone), lost by and possibly stolen from an Apple software engineer and bought for $5,000 by the website Gizmodo.com, the New York Times reports. From the San Francisco [...]

The latest on the STLR radar: Ephemeral Law takes a look at the court documents in Microsoft’s challenge to the Waledac botnet, which it describes as on the “cutting edge of legal efforts to shut down hacking operations.” The Wall Street Journal reports that the US Department of Justice is stepping up its antitrust investigation [...]

The latest on the STLR radar: The British Parliament has approved a law authorizing temporary suspension of internet access for those accused of repeated copyright infringement, reports the New York Times. Opponents of the law, such as the Open Rights Group, promise to turn this into an election issue in Great Britain. Canadian company Wi-Lan [...]

The latest on the STLR radar: The Southern District of New York‘s decision in Association for Molecular Pathology and ACLU v. USPTO and Myriad (the “gene patents case”) handed down last Monday, has generated a lot of commentary this week. Here’s a selection: reports from Wired and On the Edges of Science and Law; IP Watchdog [...]

The latest on the STLR radar: The working text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has been released. See Wired and The Register coverage of the story, and our post on the draft treaty here. The Federal Circuit rules on patent dispute Applera Corp v. Illumina, Inc. on the basis of Californian employment law, writes Patent Docs. [...]

The latest on the STLR radar: The Department of State’s annual Human Rights Report turns the spotlight on internet freedom in China and Iran, from ZDNet Government. The US District Court in Delaware stays the patent litigations between Apple and Nokia, pending decisions by the International Trade Commission, says The Register. A California appeals court [...]