The Senate must “push the envelope even further” on curbing abusive patent litigation than the House did when it passed the Innovation Act (HR-3309) earlier this month, said Application Developers Alliance President Jon Potter Monday during a CEA-sponsored Google Hangout session. The Senate Judiciary Committee is to begin considering the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) at a hearing Tuesday. The bill, introduced by committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, mirrors some portions of HR-3309 but draws more heavily from legislative recommendations from the White House. The bill does not include provisions on fee-shifting or changes to discovery rules for patent cases -- two items that drew criticism from some opponents during the debate in the House (CD Dec 6 p11). The Senate bill would also give the FTC the authority to take action against patent assertion entities that send deceptive demand letters. The Senate should particularly focus on stays on patent lawsuits against end-users and provisions that would improve patent quality during the review process at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Potter said Monday. Tuesday’s hearing will shape the Senate debate, but so will the opinions of constituents who will speak with their senators over the holidays, Potter said. Opponents of HR-3309 argued that the bill would hurt small businesses -- something Engine Advocacy co-founder Mike McGeary called “false.” The debate over possible legislation has brought together advocates “from all walks of life,” with a majority of them coming from small businesses, he said. Despite the criticism, the House passed HR-3309 with a bipartisan majority, which itself was a “clear signal to the Senate that the time for action is now,” McGeary said. “This is something that can’t wait for another election cycle.”

The correctional institutions seeking a stay of the FCC’s inmate calling service provider rules lack standing to do so, the attorney for Martha Wright told Wireline Bureau officials Thursday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1fzibnc). “They are merely third-party beneficiaries of the unjust, unreasonable and unfair rates,” wrote the attorney for the Washington, D.C., grandmother who originally petitioned the commission for lower prison phone rates. The request for stay filed by CenturyLink should be denied because the ILEC “failed to provide any new basis for granting the Stay that was not addressed” in the order, the Wright attorney said. The petition for stay filed by Pay Tel should be dismissed because its main argument -- that it would not qualify for safe harbor rates -- “is not sufficient basis for overturning [the] three-tiered structure adopted by the FCC,” the attorney said.

The Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition “seems to stand in stark contrast to what is in the best interests of broadcasters and broadcasting,” said NAB auction pointman Rick Kaplan in blog post on the NAB website Monday (http://bit.ly/1k9wsKg). NAB’s executive vice president was responding to testimony from EOBC Executive Director Preston Padden at a Senate hearing last week. Padden’s complaints that the incentive auction isn’t moving fast enough and could fail don’t represent the concerns of broadcasters that want to keep broadcasting, Kaplan said. The EOBC’s mission is “to make sure that its members are paid as much money as possible and paid as quickly as possible for their spectrum licenses,” said Kaplan. “The day their checks are cashed, their engagement in this auction ends; the EOBC has no interest in the subsequent repacking or consumer welfare.” NAB and the Association of Public Television Stations recognize the auction is complex, and their members don’t share Padden’s urgency, Kaplan said. Broadcasters “want to weigh the potential benefits of participation” and aren’t “quick-hit investors looking to turn a quick profit because of the government’s unique offer to buy back licenses,” said Kaplan. Congress, the FCC and the public should treat NAB and APTS rather than EOBC as representative of broadcasters, Kaplan said. EOBC’s membership is a “closely guarded secret,” Kaplan said. “I love the NAB and have the greatest respect for its leadership,” responded Padden in an email. “Auction based payments to broadcasters, based on wireless spectrum values, are the ‘incentive’ that will drive the success of the Incentive Auction and our Coalition genuinely is committed to that success."

The FCC Media Bureau identified 406 mutually exclusive (MX) groups from applications filed in the low-power FM window. The applications identified in the MX groups may include applications “the bureau has determined or may at a future date determine are subject to dismissal for legal and/or technical defects,” it said in a public notice (http://bit.ly/18vuXTY). Applicants may begin filing Form 318 amendments using the Consolidated Database System, it said. Some of the groups identified include Alaska Revival Radio, Northland Baptist Ministries and Rage in Wasilla, Alaska, and the Diocese of Rapid City and Western Dakota Technical Institute in Rapid City, S.D., the bureau said (http://bit.ly/1gCbRyq). Applicants in MX groups can resolve technical conflicts through technical amendments, settlements and time-share agreements, it said.

Correction: What the Pennsylvania Wireless Broadband Collocation Act of 2012 streamlines is the deployment of new cell sites, said Christopher Nurse, AT&T regional vice president-external affairs (CD Dec 13 p17).

Ruckus Wireless is partnering with the city and county of San Francisco to deliver free public Wi-Fi for the city’s Market Street Corridor, said the company in a news release Monday (http://yhoo.it/1bUtENR). San Francisco’s Department of Technology and Ruckus worked in a public-private partnership to design, build and deploy the network, said Ruckus. The outdoor network will be available starting at the intersection of Market and Castro streets and continuing to the pedestrian corridor at the Embarcadero, it said. The city selected the company because it “overcomes” the physical and technical challenges of bringing wireless connectivity to outdoor environments with its high-capacity coverage requirements, Ruckus said. Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi technology is able to extend Wi-Fi signals over longer distances while adapting signals to changes to environmental conditions, said the company.

Space Systems/Loral signed an agreement with AsiaSat to build a high-power, multi-mission satellite. The satellite, AsiaSat 9, will be used for TV broadcast, private networks and broadband services across the Asia Pacific, SSL said in a news release (http://bit.ly/Jt6Tpo). It will be located at 122 degrees east where it will replace AsiaSat 4, it said. AsiaSat 9 will be designed to operate in C, Ku and Ka bands, and it’s expected to launch in 2016, SSL said.

The FCC Media Bureau is seeking comment on the way “video clips” delivered via the Internet are closed captioned, the bureau said in a public notice Friday (http://bit.ly/1k9qSYh). “We ask whether, as a legal and/or policy matter, the Commission should require captioning of IP delivered video clips.” Though full video delivered over Internet Protocol is already required to be closed captioned, the commission held off on imposing the requirement on video clips (CD April 19 p11). But consumer groups representing the hearing impaired issued a report arguing that streaming news clips are a primary source of information on sudden calamities such as the Boston marathon bombing, and the lack of captions excludes the hearing impaired (CD May 17 p7). Sens. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Edward Markey, D-Mass., authors of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, sent a letter to the FCC earlier this month asking the commission to require captions on IP video clips (http://1.usa.gov/1ejarJ3). The PN asks about the costs, benefits and technical challenges of captioning IP video clips. It also asks for information about the differences between captioning live or near-live clips -- such as news segments -- and prerecorded clips. The PN also raises the idea of requiring captions on only a subset of IP video clips. Comments are due Jan. 27, replies Feb. 26.

Globalstar again said adopting the rules proposed in the NPRM on allowing it to provide a terrestrial low-power broadband service would “quickly add 22 MHz to the nation’s wireless broadband spectrum inventory,” in an ex parte filing in dockets 13-213 and RM-11685 (http://bit.ly/1cMSuzh). It also would “ease the congestion that is diminishing the quality of Wi-Fi service at high-traffic 802.11 hotspots and other locations,” it said. Globalstar continued to urge the FCC to maintain its prohibition on outdoor operations in the Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure band, it said. It repeated that reassignment of Globalstar’s spectrum to Iridium “would have a disastrous effect on Globalstar’s global MSS operations and cause significant harm to public safety and the customers who rely on Globalstar’s services,” it said. The proceeding on Iridium’s petition, which seeks reallocation of Big low-earth orbit spectrum from Globalstar is still pending (CD Nov 5 p5).

DirecTV, Dish Network, Hughes and EchoStar emphasized to the FCC that changes to fee categories must reflect changes in law and regulation, and “must correspond with the number of full time employees performing specified regulatory functions for particular classes of payors,” they said in an ex parte filing in dockets 13-140, 12-201 and 08-65 (http://bit.ly/1bL8AID). The cable operators’ “parity” arguments are defective “because the commission does not regulate these two industries equally,” it said. In a separate ex parte filing in those dockets, SES, Inmarsat and Telesat cautioned the FCC against requiring non-U.S.-licensed satellite operators serving the U.S. market to pay space station regulatory fees. Foreign-licensed satellites don’t obtain Title III licenses “or receive the benefits that come with grant of a U.S. space station license,” the ex parte said (http://bit.ly/1997qZT). The only commission efforts that are solely focused on foreign satellites involve processing requests for market access, “a one-time expenditure of resources that the satellite companies argued does not justify a recurring regulatory fee,” it said. The FCC’s earth station licensing database doesn’t permit determination of whether an earth station is communicating with foreign-licensed satellites, it said. During a separate meeting, Intelsat supported reassessing fees for indirect full-time employees “that rarely work on behalf of satellite operators,” it said in an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/IQf4Mw). It also reiterated that regulatory fees should be collected from non-U.S. satellite operators with U.S. market access, it said. All the satellite companies met last week with staff from the Enforcement and International bureaus and the Office of Managing Director.