Cable operators have instituted the transparency requirements mandated in the Television Viewer Protection Act "in the way that best suits their customers and existing sales and billing systems," NCTA said Friday in FCC docket 21-501. Comments on TVPA implementation by MVPDs were due Thursday (see 2112200057). NCTA said some cablers "go beyond the [truth-in-billing] requirements" in providing similar information for all their services. It said TVPA implementation in some cases required development, lab testing, field testing, and rollout of new billing and other software that could pull required disclosure data from various sources. ACA Connects said TVPA's retransmission consent “buying group” provisions "have largely served their limited purpose" because small MVPDs were able to facilitate deals in the past year between the National Cable Television Cooperative and large broadcasters. ACA said the retrans market "remains broken" and cited FCC data showing small MVPDs pay substantially more per subscriber than large operators, with that disparity widening. It said the buying group terms meant smaller transaction costs for broadcasters and MVPDs and likely meant lower prices for very small cable systems, but that didn't and couldn't narrow the gap between what big and small MVPDs pay.

Electronic applications with declarations about Section 710 of the Copyright Act and deposits are due March 31, the Copyright Office said Thursday, extending the deadline from Dec. 31. The extension is the result of COVID-19 pandemic disruptions, the CO said.

Roku partnered with Entravision to expand its advertising business in Mexico, it said Wednesday. In Q3, Roku nearly doubled monetized video ad impressions, the company said.

SiriusXM's buying AudioID, announced Monday, is expected to simplify advertising buys for satellite radio, streaming music and podcasts, said SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz on Tuesday's Q4 call. She focused on SiriusXM’s streaming business, which “still has a long way to go.” The company is working to make it easier to use its app “in many more places,” to drive usage by satellite and stand-alone digital subscribers. When subscribers stream, they consume more, she said: “They listen twice as many hours on twice as many devices.” The company expects most subscriber adds to come in the second half, “given continuing semiconductor shortages and other factors limiting vehicle sales” late last year into 2022, said Chief Financial Officer Sean Sullivan. Shares closed 6.3% higher Tuesday at $6.76. Given automotive constraints, SiriusXM “played the hand they were dealt … about as well as they could have played it,” Pivotal Research's Jeffrey Wlodarczak wrote investors. Short-term risks are the economy and chip shortages curbing auto production, said the analyst. Long term, he cited autonomous driving as a threat.

BlackBerry signed a definitive agreement to sell its “legacy” patents to Catapult IP Innovations for $600 million, BlackBerry announced Monday. BlackBerry will receive back a license to the patents being sold, which mainly involve mobile devices, messaging, wireless networking and other businesses in which BlackBerry is no longer actively involved, it said: “Patents that are essential to BlackBerry’s current core business operations are excluded from the transaction.” Satisfying the regulatory conditions to complete the sale could take up to seven months, said BlackBerry. The process to sell the “noncore” portion of the patent portfolio took “much longer” than BlackBerry hoped, said CEO John Chen on a Dec. 21 earnings call (see 2112220013)

The Washington House Judiciary Committee delayed a vote scheduled for Friday on HB-1850, a privacy bill by Rep. Vandana Slatter (D) that got support and concerns at a hearing earlier in the week. It might be rescheduled to Wednesday, a House Democrats spokesperson told us. In Virginia, a proposed edit to the state’s 2021 privacy law moved to the House General Laws Committee after clearing a subcommittee by an 8-0 vote Thursday. HB-381 would allow a data controller to treat a consumer request to delete obtained by a third party as an opt-out for targeted advertising, personal data sale and from "profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning the consumer."

Website blocking has been shown around the world to be "a fair, effective, and proportionate tool" for tackling pirate sites, and the U.S. needs to follow suit with a legal route for rightsholders to get ISPs to block websites involved in mass dissemination of copyright-infringing content, said the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Wednesday. Since Congress failed in 2012 to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, 33 nations have adopted laws letting rightsholders obtain injunctions requiring ISPs to block access to pirate sites "and the Internet continues to flourish," ITIF said. It said those nations have shown that SOPA/PIPA-era criticisms "simply do not hold up to scrutiny" and that website blocking "is a fair, effective, and proportionate tool to target sites involved in the mass, illegal dissemination of copyrighted content and that it does not undermine human rights, free speech, or net neutrality."

Comments are due March 25 in docket DOC–2021–0010 in the Commerce Department’s request for information with its National Institute of Standards and Technology to help the “planning and design” of “potential programs” authorized under the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act to promote investment in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and R&D, said an item in Monday’s Federal Register. In a detailed, five-page RFI, Commerce wants to know how incentives written into NDAA Section 9902 can “be designed and deployed to encourage additional and new private capital investment in the semiconductor ecosystem.” It seeks input on how federal funds can “incentivize the creation of a broad semiconductor ecosystem that includes producers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and other upstream suppliers.” Section 9906 would establish a National Semiconductor Technology Center as “a hub (or multiple hubs) of talent, knowledge, investment, equipment, and toolsets,” said the notice. Commerce wants to know “what attributes or capabilities of the NSTC would make it attractive and beneficial for companies, universities, and other agencies to want to send employees for assignments” there. It also wants to know what types of research and training opportunities should be made available at the NSTC “for students and early career staff.”

Though ATSC “is not directly involved in patent licensing, we are pleased to hear the announcement of the ATSC 3.0 patent pool” by MPEG LA (see 2201200058), emailed ATSC President Madeleine Noland Friday. “Recognizing that patent pools often add licensors over time, we are delighted to see this group of thirteen licensors working together to simplify and accelerate ATSC 3.0 adoption into an expanding line-up of NextGenTV products.”

Samsung applied Jan. 14 to trademark “SmartThings Home Tablet” for commercializing “smart home hubs” in a tablet form factor to connect robotic vacuum cleaners and other home appliances to a wireless network, Patent and Trademark Office records show. The company announced the launch of Samsung Home Hub earlier this month, billing it as a “new way to manage home appliances” via a “tablet-style touchscreen device” that uses AI and SmartThings technology “to understand users’ needs and automatically provide the right solutions” to household tasks. Samsung didn’t comment about its commercial deployment plans for the SmartThings Home Tablet trademark. Samsung bought the SmartThings IoT platform in August 2014, making it part of the Samsung Open Innovation Center (see 1408180053).