The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative removed Paraguay from its 2015 Special 301 Watch List after the U.S. signed an intellectual property rights (IPR) agreement with the country Thursday, USTR said in a statement. The agency plans an out-of-cycle review of Paraguay in the near future, the statement said. USTR released its most recent edition of the Special 301 Report in late April (see 1505010009). Paraguay has "stepped up its efforts to strengthen IPR protection and enforcement" over the past 18 months, said USTR.

SoTel Systems is expanding into the Latin American region through the acquisition of the international business operations of Teleswitch in Miami, a news release from SoTel said Tuesday. SoTel is an international provider of business communications equipment, products and services, including domestic VoIP service, it said. The new division of SoTel will operate as Teleswitch International, the release said.

Chinese consumers (65 percent) tend to prefer to shop in brick-and-mortar stores, while those who buy online, generally 30-somethings, do so to avoid crowds and to find the best bargain, said CEA Chief Economist Steve Koenig in Shanghai last week at CES Asia. He presented results of an online survey of 3,000 Chinese consumers along with half-hour conversations. Seventy-two percent had a smartphone that’s six months to two years old and 66 percent own a wearable that’s less than a year old, Koenig said. Fifty-seven percent said they replace their smartphone every two years and 63 percent plan to replace their wearable every two years, Koenig said. Forty-six percent buy a new smartphone to replace a non-working model, while 43 percent buy to upgrade to a newer model. In TV viewing, 36 percent of Chinese consumers spend their time watching live content, 20 percent view digital video files, 16 percent watch VOD, 10 percent view streamed content and 10 percent use a DVR, Koenig said. The cutoff age for predominantly live versus DVR content is 40, he said.

Evoking a connected future where “everything that consumes electricity computes and communicates,” Intel Senior Vice President Kirk Skaugen outlined the future of Intel-powered devices and solutions. Skaugen spoke Monday at CES Asia in Shanghai of the PC being the “incubator” for technologies that “waterfall” to smaller and smaller devices due to miniaturization, increased processing power and “halved” manufacturing costs. Shaping the consumer electronics industry over the next five to 10 years are innovation in personal computing; creating new technology experiences by eliminating wiring and passwords; and buildout of the IoT. Skaugen cited the 50 billion connected devices expected to be in the market by 2020, where anything that can be made to compute and connect “will do so.” The results will benefit users’ lifestyle, health, safety and “many unimagined results,” while creating volumes of cloud-based data, he said. Intel’s version of “cord-cutting” means cutting out cords altogether, said Skaugen, citing the Rezence wireless charging standard and proximity-based peripheral syncing that will cut the cord between a monitor and a PC. This wire-free computing, based on WiGig, enables monitors to start up automatically when in proximity to a PC, he said. Intel’s vision by 2016, said Skaugen, is to “eliminate all wires from computing,” and that includes charging cables, data transfer and HDMI cables for convenience and e-waste reasons. Intel is working on new ways to interact with mobile devices including a facial or iris scan as a way to log in to a PC, said Skaugen.

An equal number of cellphones, batteries and Bluetooth earphones included in the same container shipment but not packaged for retail sale isn't classifiable as a "retail set," said Customs and Border Protection in an internal advice ruling. Samsung Telecommunications America, the importer, argued that the merchandise is covered within general rules of interpretation 3(b) that describes "mixtures, composite goods, and goods put up in sets for retail sale." CBP disagreed with Samsung and said the goods should be sold separately rather than as a set. The Port of Dallas took issue with a 2013 Samsung entry of an "equal number of mobile phone handsets, batteries, and Bluetooth wireless earphones, imported in the same container, but segregated in separate shipping boxes by kind and not packaged for retail sale." The port questioned Samsung's classification of the goods as retail set and requested the internal advice. CBP headquarters found that because the merchandise isn't imported in a condition suitable for sale directly to users without repacking, 3(b) doesn't apply. The ruling dated Jan. 15 was recently released. Samsung representatives didn’t comment.

Consumers in the U.K. are spending at least twice as much time online as they were 10 years ago, fueled by increasing use of tablets and smartphones, U.K. regulator Ofcom said Monday in its annual report on media use and attitudes. Ofcom researchers canvassed 1,890 consumers 16 and older and found they claimed to spend on average more than 20 hours and 30 minutes online in a given week last year, it said. That’s more than double the nine hours and 54 minutes of average weekly time online in 2005, it said. The biggest increase in online use came among those 16-24 years old, almost tripling from 10 hours and 24 minutes per week in 2005 to 27 hours and 36 minutes by the end of 2014, it said. “Increasing take-up of tablets and smartphones is boosting time spent online.” Though 5 percent of adults reported using a tablet to go online in 2010, that increased to 39 percent in 2014, Ofcom said. Using a smartphone also has more than doubled in five years, from 30 percent of adults in 2010 to 66 percent in 2014, it said. “Overall, the proportion of adults using the internet has risen by half” in the past decade, from six in every 10 in 2005 to almost nine in 10 today, it said.

Microsoft will mount a full-fledged exhibit at the IFA European CE trade show to promote the release of Windows 10, organizers said in Malta Saturday. IFA opens Sept. 4 at the Messe Berlin fairgrounds for a six-day run. Though Microsoft participated as an IFA exhibitor last year, that presence was limited to the Microsoft Devices Group, which included the newly acquired Nokia phones business. Bryan Biniak, Microsoft general manager-developer experiences, who joined from Nokia a year ago, used his session to trumpet Microsoft as a company that’s now seen as “cool” and “focusing on the consumer.” Biniak painted a rosy picture of the future based on Windows 10, due for launch “this summer,” he said. “There will be “one OS, one platform and one store,” he predicted. Windows 10, he said, will be used across all devices. “Microsoft is now a very different place” from the company that introduced Windows 8 to mixed reviews, Biniak said. “People in the company are listening and acknowledging the success, actually lack of success, of Windows 8. It’s a top priority to make Windows 10 successful.”

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) renewed its “call for Congress to increase funding for the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) process,” following a multi-association letter sent to congressional leaders last week, an ITI news release said Monday. Nations use MLATs “to request data for criminal investigation,” ITI said. “As the backlog in requests go unanswered, foreign governments are attempting to circumvent the MLAT process and seek data directly from U.S. technology companies, placing companies in a difficult posture, as the law requires these requests to go through the MLAT process.” With some 11,000 MLAT requests waiting to be processed, ITI said it and a coalition of tech sector trade groups have “pressed Congress to fully fund the MLAT process.”

Sixty-six nongovernmental organizations from around the globe sent a joint letter to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker asking for confirmation that the EU’s reformed Data Protection framework will maintain the data privacy protections afforded to EU citizens, a European Digital Rights (EDRi) news release said Tuesday. In 2012, the European Commission proposed to modernize and reform European privacy legislation, and the European Commission promised individuals’ data protections wouldn't fall below existing levels, the release said. “Leaks show that this promise is not being kept,” it said. "Without leadership from President Juncker, the right to privacy, not just in Europe but around the globe will be undermined," said EDRi Executive Director Joe McNamee. "We hope and expect that the Commission President will uphold the integrity and independence of his institution,” and issue a “short, rapid response to our question," he said. “Faced with profiling, digitisation of health data and online tracking, every corner of our lives is increasingly being invaded by ‘big data’,” the release said. “Due to the amount of data being collected, businesses and governments increasingly know more about us than we know about ourselves -- about our preferences, our health, our relationships and our politics,” it said. “Without credible regulation citizens lose, businesses lose, society loses.”

Public Knowledge and 27 other groups and legal scholars sent a letter to the International Trade Commission Friday “opposing a recent decision that the Commission has authority to block internet data transmissions,” a Public Knowledge news release said. The decision giving ITC the authority to “block the importation of copyright- and patent-infringing products extends to an ability to block Internet data transmissions into the United States,” the release said. “By declaring that all digital data transfers are subject to the ITC’s purview, the Commission forces every business, small and large, who exchanges data over the Internet to contemplate the possibility of being brought before the ITC,” said Public Knowledge Director-Patent Reform Project Charles Duan. “Our concern was starkly heightened when we learned last December that the MPAA intends to use this ruling to force Internet Service Providers to perform website blocking,” Duan said. The letter “asks the ITC to rethink its position on blocking Internet content,” Duan said. ITC had no immediate comment.