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Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) announced that he will not run for reelection in 2014, giving Republicans a prime pickup opportunity in a state that's grown increasingly red in recent years.

“As I approach 50 years of public service in West Virginia, I’ve decided that 2014 will be the right moment for me to find new ways to fight for the causes I believe in and to spend more time with my incredible family," Sen Rockefeller said in a statement. Republicans already have their top recruit in place for the race. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) threw her hat in the ring late last year, and is considered the front-runner for the seat, should she survive what could be a tough GOP primary. Democrats have some hope that the seat can remain in their column. Despite the increasingly red tint of West Virginia, the state hasn’t elected a Republican senator since 1956. Rockefeller’s decision to retire now, at the very start of the election cycle, gives Democrats plenty of time to mount a defense. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), who is tasked with recruiting Senate candidates as chairman of the chamber's campaign committee, acknowledged the challenge that Democrats face in West Virginia. He said the party would look for an “independent-minded Democrat" to run for the seat.

Technology companies including Apple and Google won court approval of a $527 million deal for Eastman Kodak patents that are being sold as part of Kodak’s bid to exit bankruptcy protection. The agreement, approved at a hearing by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper in Manhattan, is worth less than the more than $2 billion value of the patents estimated by a Kodak advisory firm.

Gropper acknowledged that the company was “disappointed” in the price. “But we’re moving the case forward, so we should be optimistic,” he said. The group, which also includes Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Research In Motion, and Samsung, came together after Kodak won bankruptcy court approval last year to auction more than 1,000 patents related to the capture, manipulation and sharing of digital images.

On December 10, 2012, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the formation of an agency-wide Technology Transitions Policy Task Force to provide recommendations on how to modernize the FCC’s policies in a manner that encourages the technological transition, empowers and protects consumers, promotes competition, and ensures network resiliency and reliability.

The Technology Transitions Policy Task Force is conducting a data-driven review to ensure that our nation’s communications policies continue to drive a virtuous cycle of innovation and investment, promote competition, and protect consumers. Parties meeting with the Technology Transitions Policy Task Force may advocate on issues that are not the subject of an open proceeding. It is nevertheless important that the Task Force have an open and transparent process. Accordingly, the FCC will treat presentations to the Technology Transitions Policy Task Force (including both oral meetings and written submissions), as to the work of the Task Force as subject to filing in a “permit-but-disclose” proceedings, in which ex parte presentations to Commission decision-making personnel are permissible but subject to certain disclosure requirements in accordance with the Commission’s ex parte rules. Presentations to the Technology Transitions Policy Task Force should be filed in GN Docket No. 13-5 (as well as any other applicable docket, where appropriate).

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz welcomed Joshua D. Wright as an FTC Commissioner at a swearing-in ceremony.

President Barack Obama named Wright, a Republican, to a term that ends on September 25, 2019. He was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on January 1, 2013, and will replace J. Thomas Rosch, who served as a Commissioner since January 2006. Before joining the FTC, Wright was a Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, having served previously as Scholar in Residence at the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. Earlier, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Texas School of Law and a Visiting Fellow at the Searle Center at the Northwestern University School of Law. Wright’s areas of expertise include antitrust law and economics, consumer protection, empirical law and economics, intellectual property, and the law and economics of contracts. He has published numerous articles in leading academic journals, and co-authored Pioneers of Law and Economics and Competition Policy and Patent Law under Uncertainty: Regulating Innovation. Wright is the co-editor of the Supreme Court Economic review, and serves on the editorial board of the Antitrust Law Journal, Global Competition Policy, and Competition Policy International. Wright received a J.D. and a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA, where he was managing editor of the UCLA Law Review, and a B.A. in economics with highest departmental honors at the University of California, San Diego. Before joining the George Mason University School of Law faculty, he clerked for the Honorable James V. Selna of the Central District of California and taught at the Pepperdine University Graduate School of Public Policy.