Innovation Policy Post

Last week, CCIA filed an amicus brief [PDF] with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Oracle v. Google.  Oracle’s initial complaint included both copyright and patent claims, and the court decided to split it up into separate cases.  (For more information on the rather complicated procedural history, ArsTechnica has a series of posts following each development.)  CCIA’s brief was filed in an appeal of the case involving the copyrightability of APIs.  CCIA urged the Federal Circuit to affirm the district court’s finding that Oracle’s APIs at issue were not copyrightable.  

Senate Commerce subcommittee chairman Mark Pryor opened his hearing on the Future of Video Tuesday saying Congress wants to update laws so that people can get the content they want and that it’s affordable.  The conversation quickly turned to a la carte channel pricing and sports team broadcasting and the frustration of fans and satellite and cable subscribers when they can’t watch their hometown team.

The European Commission has just launched a Green Paper entitled  'Preparing for a Fully Converged Audiovisual World: Growth, Creation and Values’. The objective of this Paper is to start a broad, public discussion on the implications of the on-going transformation of the audiovisual media landscape. The concept of ‘convergence’ takes centre stage which is understood as the ‘progressive merger of traditional broadcast services and the internet’. By trying to account for the fact that all devices through which audiovisual content can be consumed become increasingly connected, the paper addresses two sets of questions. 

The Senate voted to pass S. 743, the Marketplace Fairness Act yesterday.  CCIA has long opposed this bill, which would impose burdensome tax collecting requirements on online retailers regardless of physical presence.  Especially disappointing about the vote was the fact that the Senate decided to eschew substantive discussion about the consequences of this action on the economy in favor of a simplistic declaration of fairness.  While state and local tax jurisdictions continue to shy away from the necessary task of simplifying their sales tax systems, proponents of the bill certainly have no such qualms about oversimplifying the debate.