Innovation Policy Post

In last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama urged Congress to put America’s future first by making the investments in innovation, education, and infrastructure that will allow America to “do big things” and maintain our place as the world’s leading economy.

We agree. The nation faces a decision whether to invest and grow or to simply grow stagnate. As the President said, “[r] evolutions in technology have transformed the way we live, work and do business.” We must take the steps necessary to evolve, compete, and win in this changing world – research, education, and infrastructure are the right place to start.

No wireless carrier has a 100% network footprint across the entire United States. So in order for all competitors to offer seamless mobile service, all carriers must interconnect and provide “out of market” “roaming” services to other carriers on reasonable terms and conditions. The FCC long ago mandated roaming interconnection for mobile voice service.

Now that more folks are relying on their handheld devices for Internet access and even IP based voice conversations, the FCC has recognized that roaming requirements should be extended to data communications. The FCC’s 2010 National Broadband Plan recommended that data roaming obligations be enforced. The FCC staff has done all the requisite work to implement the modernization of its rules.

In July 2010 the European Commission proposed a new Directive for the “Intra-Corporate Temporary Transfer of Non-EU Skilled Workers”. The proposal’s aim is to facilitate for multinational companies the temporary transfer of third-country national skilled workers from a company located outside the EU to branches or subsidiaries within the EU.

The European Policy Centre (EPC), an independent, not-for-profit think tank committed to European integration, organized a policy dialogue on 11th January 2011. The panel was composed of Maria Åsenius, Head of Cabinet of Commissioner Malmström, Ameet Nivsakar, Vice President of NASSCOM, John Monks, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), Jan Mulder, Member of European Parliament, and Karl Cox, Vice President of Oracle responsible for public policy and corporate affairs. The panel debate was moderated by Erika Mann (Executive Vice President CCIA) in her role as Vice President of the EPC’s Advisory Council.

In December, the long awaited version 2.0 of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) was released by the European Commission. Version 1.0 had defined “open standard” as royalty-free, a definition of enormous impact on standards policy because it focused on the user perspective rather than the perspective of standards development organizations. Some standards organizations claim that “open standards” refers only to the way the standard was developed – not the terms of availability. In addition, some argue that “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” licensing (FRAND or simply RAND – without the “fair,” as it is known in the U.S.) should be the baseline for openness, not “royalty-free” (RF).

With Republican control of the House and a larger Republican minority in the Senate, the conventional wisdom seems to be that any legislative action on immigration reform will be difficult. Certainly any attempts at legalizing illegal immigrants (and comprehensive reform packages that contain them) are likely to be met with fierce resistance by Republicans. However, we should not automatically assume that the new House majority would be opposed to any form of immigration. It is important to note that the kind of skilled immigration reform that CCIA and the tech industry advocate aligns closely with Republican principles.

Late last month FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski began circulating an order approving the proposed merger of Comcast with NBC Universal.  Throughout the regulatory approval process lawmakers, industry groups, and consumer advocates have called on the FCC and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division to block the proposed combination because it provides no public interest benefits, further consolidates control of media content and distribution capabilities, and will likely result in higher prices and harm to consumers and emerging markets.  CCIA agrees with these concerns.

As Congress returns this week, intellectual property reform will likely be high on the agenda of the Judiciary committee’s new Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet.  Patent mayhem has not abated during the hiatus in reform efforts.  The unprecedented litigation foodfight in the smartphone marketplace, for example, continues to grow, with Sony filing ITC claims against LG.  (An effort to document the status quo of the sprawling litigation in November appears here, although even this effort is now dated, and omits several patent holding companies.)