Jimm Phillips

Preparation for Superstorm Sandy’s landfall was key to New York-area broadcasters’ efforts to disseminate news and information to the public, said executives from Clear Channel Media and WABC during the FCC’s second hearing Tuesday on the storm’s communications impact. Others testified how Google and Twitter helped to fill the void left by outages in the area’s wireless and wireline communications networks.

The U.S. is experiencing an “historically high” patent grant rate after decades of increases, but the government’s patent system needs improvement, said the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program Friday in a new report. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted 247,713 patents during 2011, a “record high” that follows steady increases in patent grant rates that extend back to 1985, Brookings said (http://xrl.us/bod6n4).

Vringo subsidiary I/P Engine filed a patent suit against Microsoft, claiming Microsoft violated two patents on search relevance filtering technology -- the patents I/P Engine used to successfully sue Google and others last year. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, alleges repeated violations of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,314,420 and 6,775,664. Vringo acquired the patents when it merged with I/P Engine; Lycos previously owned them (http://xrl.us/bodwup). A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company is “unable to ... comment at this time."

Samsung violated Apple’s design and utility patents, but its intent was “not willful,” U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled late Tuesday, denying Apple’s request for additional damages on top of an existing damage award. A jury for the San Jose, Calif., federal court decided in late August that Apple should receive more than $1 billion in damages after it ruled Samsung had infringed multiple Apple patents on its mobile products (CD Aug 28/12 p6).

AT&T is buying 39 of Verizon Wireless’s lower 700 MHz B-block licenses for $1.9 billion cash and the transfer of several AWS licenses. The announcement quickly drew criticism from groups advocating for public interest concerns and the interest of smaller carriers. The AWS licenses that Verizon Wireless will receive in the deal cover western markets, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, Fresno and Portland, both carriers said. The two carriers are also pursuing related spectrum agreements through private equity firm Grain Management. AT&T said it will lease three 700 MHz B-block licenses in North Carolina that Verizon Wireless is selling to Grain for $189 million -- those cover the Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh-Durham markets. AT&T also plans to sell Grain an AWS license covering Dallas, which Verizon Wireless will then lease. The FCC and the Department of Justice will need to clear the transactions covered in the deal; AT&T said it anticipates those transactions will close in the second half of the year (http://xrl.us/bocbhj).

Major changes in the U.S. telecom marketplace in the 15 years since passage of the 1996 Telecom Act highlight the need for reforms to that legislation, said Free State Foundation President Randolph May Wednesday during an event. The pro-deregulation think tank was promoting its new book, Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age, which focuses on how U.S. telecom law and policy should change over the next five years. Reforms should reflect changes to the marketplace since 1996 -- the switch from analog to digital, the switch from narrow-band to broadband networks and the switch from a mostly monopolistic marketplace to one that’s highly competitive, May said. “Those changes call for a new communications law, and certainly, absent waiting for the new law, changes in the direction of communications policy,” he said.

Verizon Wireless had a record-setting Q4, but its majority owner, Verizon Communications, said Tuesday that it had a $4.22 billion loss in earnings during the quarter due to changes to their benefits and pension plans, debt restructuring and costs related to Superstorm Sandy. Verizon Communications owns 55 percent of Verizon Wireless, and Vodafone the rest. Verizon Communications’ Q4 earnings loss was more than double its $2 billion loss at the same time in 2011. This year’s loss was despite a rise in total quarterly revenue to $30 billion -- the highest amount in 2012 and up from $28.4 billion at the same time in 2011, it said (http://xrl.us/bobv55).

The U.S. will need to make global engagement a priority as it makes its case for its vision on Internet and telecom governance issues following last month’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), said Terry Kramer, head of the U.S.’s WCIT delegation, during a news conference Thursday. Kramer has been in Washington, holding a series of final briefings with government officials and members of the telecom industry on the outcome of WCIT and the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) produced at the conference in Dubai, which ended Dec. 14. Those briefings are Kramer’s last acts as head of the delegation; he said his appointment to the position ends Friday.

C Spire Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless say they haven’t experienced any impacts from a winter storm that has brought freezing rain, sleet and flooding to large portions of the southeastern U.S. Impacts from the storm had prompted Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) to declare a state of emergency in 45 counties in the northeastern part of that state; the storm has affected portions of other states along the East Coast and Gulf Coast, the National Weather Service said. Verizon Wireless’s network was “performing well” as of Wednesday afternoon, a spokeswoman told us, saying the carrier will “continue to monitor our network 24/7 to ensure it is performing for our customers.” Sprint’s network isn’t “experiencing any impacts” from the storm, which The Weather Channel refers to as Winter Storm Helen, a Sprint spokeswoman said. However, the carrier is “diligently monitoring the storm progress and [has] plans in place to deploy resources if the storm poses a significant threat,” the spokeswoman said. C Spire “has not experienced any service interruptions or impacts” to its network from the storm, the carrier said late Tuesday in a news release. The carrier was “taking precautionary steps to bolster its network and mobilize employees to protect against potential damage” Tuesday amid concerns about deteriorating conditions, said Eric Hollingsworth, C Spire vice president-network operations (http://xrl.us/boa4g7).

The intellectual property (IP) market “cannot work effectively unless innovators know what a patented invention covers and know some reasonable amount about who owns it,” U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director David Kappos said during a roundtable at the USPTO with industry experts. “We need as much transparency as possible to get IP rights into the hands of those who are best able to make the investments and create the jobs and drive growth and generate economic activity that, after all, is the purpose of having a patent system in the first place.” Kappos and other USPTO officials held the roundtable to collect public input on how the the office should change its rules on collecting and publishing real-party-in-interest (RPI) patent ownership information.