Benton RSS Feed
The Supreme Court has struck down a law mandating that nonprofit organizations adopt a policy opposing prostitution as a condition for receiving federal funds for HIV/AIDS programs abroad, saying such a requirement violated the groups' free-speech rights.
In the 6-2 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts led the majority, with Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself. The case, Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, Inc., stems from a 2003 vote by Congress stating that no federal funds "may be used to promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution" nor go to any organization "that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution."
Justices: Federal Funds Can't Infringe On Nonprofits' Free Speech
The release of the Administration’s 2013 Joint Strategic Plan for Intellectual Property Enforcement builds on our efforts to protect intellectual property to date, and provides a roadmap for our work over the next three years.
In preparing the 2013 Joint Strategic Plan, we solicited public comment on how to improve our approach, and that public input was invaluable in drafting the final version of the Joint Strategic Plan. We will continue to seek public views on how to best promote and protect intellectual property rights. We will review our domestic legislation to make sure it is effective and up-to-date. We will look for ways to use technology better to make enforcement more efficient and targeted. We want to discourage infringement and encourage those that are appropriately building on the works of others to create new works, so we will educate authors on how fair use works to allow creation of new works. We will increase support for small and medium sized companies that are seeking to expand into foreign markets. And we will begin collecting information on labor conditions in the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit and pirated goods overseas.
Intellectual Property: A Key Driver of our Economy Commerce Bureaus Play Key Role in Intellectual Property Accomplishments and Future Priorities (Dept of Commerce) Administration Issues Latest IP Enforcement Action Plan (B&C) White House updates intellectual property strategy (The Hill)
The Federal Trade Commission will launch an investigation of the business practices of so-called patent trolls in an effort to understand whether those companies are harming competition and consumers, the agency's chairwoman said.
As part of a growing focus of the U.S. government on patent abuses, the FTC will study patent assertion entities (PAEs), companies with the primary business model of buying and licensing patents, in an effort to understand the costs and benefits of PAE activity, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said. The agency will also watch PAEs closely for possible anticompetitive lawsuits and will take antitrust enforcement action against PAEs if warranted, Ramirez said. One PAE business model that's emerging is patent privateering, in which an operating company transfers its patents to a PAE, and the PAE files a patent infringement lawsuit against a competitor of the first company, she said.
FTC to launch new investigation of patent trolls FTC's Ramirez calls for comprehensive study of patent trolls (The Hill)
The White House laid out how it hopes to enforce rules against copyright infringement, patent trolling, and more.
The Joint Strategic Plan, as it’s called, isn’t exactly a new initiative. It’s a periodic report that codifies existing ideas, urges government agencies and companies to work together, and picks up where previous measures left off. But despite years of complaints about overzealous intellectual property protection — and high-profile cases over whether things as simple as human DNA can be patented — it may be a step in the right direction.
"The White House’s Strategic Plan identifies a number of sensible measures to improve copyright enforcement that even copyright skeptics should be able to embrace," says Berin Szoka of the libertarian-leaning think tank TechFreedom. Sherwin Siy, of digital rights group Public Knowledge, also called the report "very encouraging." Both groups have frequently opposed what they see as an overreaching enforcement system, but Siy believes that the report challenges some of the draconian "received dogma" about intellectual property.
The White House’s latest copyright and patent plan could be better than you think White House Gets Applause for IP Action Plan (Broadcasting&Cable)
Sprint and Clearwire announced that they have agreed to amend Sprint's agreement to acquire the approximately 50 percent of Clearwire it does not currently own (the “minority stake”) for $5.00 per share, valuing Clearwire at approximately $14 billion, or about $0.30 per MHZ-pop.
This increased offer represents a 47 percent premium to Sprint’s previous offer of $3.40 per share announced on May 21, 2013 and a 285 percent premium to Clearwire's closing share price on Oct. 10, 2012, the day before the Sprint-SoftBank discussions were first confirmed in the marketplace and Clearwire was speculated to be a part of that transaction. This offer also represents a 14 percent premium to the $4.40 per share DISH tender offer. Sprint has received commitments from a group of significant Clearwire stockholders -- including Mount Kellett Capital Management LP, Glenview Capital Management LLC, Chesapeake Partners Management Co., Inc. and Highside Capital Management LP -- which collectively own approximately 9 percent of Clearwire’s voting shares, to vote their shares in support of the transaction. These stockholders have also agreed to sell their shares to Sprint in the event the transaction does not close. Together with the voting commitments previously received from Comcast Corp., Intel Corp and Bright House Networks LLC, who collectively own approximately 13 percent of Clearwire’s voting shares, and Clearwire’s directors and officers, stockholders owning approximately 45 percent of the Clearwire voting shares not affiliated with Sprint, have now agreed to vote their shares in support of the transaction. Sprint expects a majority of the non-Sprint stockholders to support the Clearwire merger based on these agreements and the votes of shareholders with both Sprint and Clearwire shareholdings who have already voted in favor of the Sprint SoftBank transaction.
In addition to the increased price per share, the companies have further amended the merger agreement that was previously entered into. Specifically, among other things, in certain circumstances where the transaction between Sprint and Clearwire terminates, Clearwire will be required to pay a termination fee of $115 million, or 3 percent of the equity value of the minority stake. In the event the transaction is not completed, Clearwire has agreed to hold its annual shareholder meeting as expeditiously as possible and if the transaction is not completed under certain circumstances, Clearwire has agreed to waive the current standstill provision in the Equityholders’ Agreement between Sprint, Clearwire, and the company’s strategic investors. That standstill provision was originally set to expire on November 28, 2013.
Sprint and Clearwire Agree to Increased Acquisition Offer Sprint Raises Clearwire Bid to $5 a Share (WSJ) Sprint Boosts Clearwire Bid, Topping Dish (WSJ) Sprint Raises Bid for Clearwire, Topping Dish’s Offer by 14% (Bloomberg)
It was perhaps the cleverest corporate tax strategy ever devised: no matter how much money the company made, neither it nor its shareholders would ever owe a penny in federal income taxes. “In conception, it was brilliant,” said Robert Willens, a longtime tax analyst who now runs his own firm, Robert Willens L.L.C. “It would have been probably the greatest tax avoidance structure ever devised, had they earned income.”
Instead, the strategy has now backfired on the Tribune Company, the publisher of The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. The company seems likely to have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes that it would never have owed had it not tried to be so clever. Without the expected tax savings, the numbers probably would not have worked when Samuel Zell, the real estate billionaire, was putting together his 2007 takeover of Tribune. Perhaps he would have dropped the deal, or perhaps he would have been unable to finance it. In either case, everyone involved would have been better off.
Tribune’s Clever Tax Strategy Now Spells Trouble
There are a lot of places to spend money on digital music, but all of them are dwarfed by iTunes.
If you spend any time at all thinking about the digital music business, you know that already. But it’s good to see it spelled out, courtesy of Asymco analyst Horace Dediu and Billboard’s Glenn Peoples. Dediu, incorporating new numbers released from Apple, pegs iTunes music spending at $6.9 billion a year. Peoples, riffing off numbers provided by the music industry’s international trade group, pegs total consumer spending on digital music at about $9.3 billion a year. In other words, Apple owns about 75 percent of the digital music market. Leaving the rest for a group that includes subscription services like Pandora, Deezer, Rhapsody and assorted retailers like Amazon.
Apple Still Has a Giant Advantage in Digital Music, With 75 Percent of the Market
ABC would like to see the Federal Communications Commission revamp its indecency policy which the company has no confidence is still even constitutional.
ABC echoed the other networks in saying broadcasting is no longer uniquely pervasive or accessible to children, which underpins the Supreme Court Pacifica decision that rationalized the FCC's content regulation authority. "Changes in the marketplace and in technology since 1978 have rendered obsolete the basic assumptions upon which the Supreme Court approved differential treatment for broadcast 'indecency,'" ABC said.
If the FCC is determined to continue to regulate broadcast indecency, ABC said, it makes the following suggestions to make that policy less vague, subjective, inconsistent, and arbitrary.
1) Return to the former FCC policy that the broadcast of spontaneous, fleeting expletives in live programming does not violate the indecency rules;
2) Clearly exempt news, documentary, and public affairs programming from the indecency rules;
3) Clearly hold that material is not indecent if it is not both highly graphic and so sustained or repeated as to constitute verbal or visual 'shock treatment'; and
4) Treat broadcasters' artistic and editorial choices with great deference and abandon what the Second Circuit has characterized as the 'artistic necessity' standard, which puts the onus on the broadcaster.
ABC to FCC: Revamp Arbitrary, Inconsistent Indecency Policy
In comments filed at the Federal Communications Commission, CBS says, “The Commission should proceed against alleged broadcast indecency only in the most egregious cases -- that is, where the elements of graphic explicitness, 'dwelling or repetition' and a context evincing a lack of serious purpose are all present.” Reform is clearly needed, said CBS, given that "scores" of license renewal applications remain held up over indecency complaints. "More restrained enforcement is necessary if any order is to be brought to the chaotic state of indecency regulation.”
CBS: FCC Should Adopt 'Egregious Case' Indecency Enforcement Policy
NBC says it can find little, if any, legal justification for the Federal Communications Commission’s regulation of indecent broadcasts.
NBC says that broadcasting is neither uniquely pervasive nor uniquely accessible to children, and, as such, the Supreme Court's Pacifica Decision "no longer provides a valid basis for a broadcast-specific indecency regime." It calls on the FCC to initiate a rulemaking proceeding to consider how, and even whether, it can "develop a constitutionally sustainable indecency enforcement regime." NBC suggests that will be an uphill climb, though it says that a process with clear procedural requirements and sufficient due process, "if adequately explained and scrupulously enforced," it might just pass muster with the courts, a point CBS also made in its filing.
NBC: FCC Needs to Launch Indecency Enforcement Rulemaking