Though the U.S.-China trade war continues with no end in sight, the good news for Broadcom’s semiconductor segment is that “we have not seen further deterioration in our business" since last quarter, said CEO Hock Tan on a fiscal Q3 call Thursday. That prompted Broadcom to leave unchanged its forecast, downgraded on its June call from the $2 billion hit from the trade war (see 1906140011), of $17.5 billion in semiconductor revenue for the fiscal year ending in November, said Tan. “Visibility” into the next fiscal year “continues to be very limited on the semiconductor side,” he said. “So we are managing the business with an expectation that we will continue to operate in a very low-growth, uncertain macro environment for the foreseeable future.” The trade war “is turning into an extended affair with lots of twists and turns in uncertainty,” said Tan. “We are assuming” trade conditions next fiscal year are “not going to change from what we're seeing now,” which means “you probably see a very uncertain 2020,” he said. Broadcom is at least three months away from being able to give clearer 2020 guidance, “but as we sit here right now,” it appears “we have hit bottom” in the semiconductor business, he said. “We're kind of staying at the bottom.” There’s not “much clarity or visibility yet or certainty that any sharp recovery is around the corner,” he said. The stock closed 3.1 percent lower Friday at $290.32. The “fundamentals” of Broadcom’s semiconductor business “remain strong,” said Tan. “We continue to benefit from the underlying trend in the IT world and insatiable need for increasing bandwidth to connect things.”

DirecTV advertising warning of TV channels being lost unless Congress reauthorizes the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act is "disingenuous at best, deceptive at worst," NAB President Gordon Smith said in a letter Thursday to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. STELAR "was never intended to be permanent" and the number of U.S. households not getting local broadcast signals via DirecTV is small, Smith said. He said most DirecTV subscribers face no impact if STELA expires, and AT&T is "sadly misleading" them. He said AT&T's DirecTV doesn't need STELAR to provide local broadcast signals in the 210 U.S. TV markets. The telco didn't comment.

The House Judiciary Committee cleared legislation that would establish a voluntary small claims board within the Copyright Office (see 1909100069), despite warnings from Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. The measure passed by voice vote Tuesday. The Senate Judiciary Committee in July unanimously advanced the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (Case) Act (HR-2426/S-1273) to the floor, despite opposition from Public Knowledge and the Center for Democracy & Technology. Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., successfully offered an amendment with technical revisions, including provisions that freeze caps on fees and monetary damages for three years. Lofgren supports the goal -- to allow creators filing copyright claims an alternative to federal court -- but cited free-speech concerns from the American Civil Liberties Union, Computer and Communications Industry Association, Internet Association and Mozilla. She ultimately supported this legislation, but said if speech issues on notice and takedown aren’t addressed, the plan won’t pass the Senate. It’s sad if one senator holds up bill, which has been out for a long time, said ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., who sponsored the bill with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. Groups like the ACLU should have participated in the public process, he added. Copyright infringement isn’t a victimless crime, and the bill will aid content creators like musicians and photographers who can’t justify costs of taking claims to federal court, said Jeffries. The Copyright Alliance applauded Tuesday's passage, saying it will help hundreds of thousands of content creators. PK said the legislation “falls short.” A small claims court “needs to be accountable, appealable, and limited to reasonable damage levels,” said Policy Counsel Meredith Rose Wednesday. “The system envisioned by CASE is none of those. It lacks meaningful appealability, and offers damage caps that are higher than the median income for over a quarter of all Americans.”

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on free trade “is critical to our economic future and congressional approval will promote America’s global digital leadership,” wrote CTA, the Information Technology Industry Council, Semiconductor Industry Association and eight other tech groups Monday, urging its ratification. “Internet-connected small businesses are three times as likely to export and create jobs, grow four times more quickly, and earn twice as much revenue per employee,” they said. “Their success is thanks to America’s digital policy framework, and USMCA will modernize North American trade rules to better reflect that framework.” Passing the USMCA “would be a significant step” toward guaranteeing North American leadership in the global digital economy and establishing a “worldwide framework to address the challenges confronting global access and usage of digital trade,” they said. Also signing were ACT|The App Association, BSA|The Software Alliance, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, CompTIA, Internet Association, Internet Infrastructure Coalition, Software & Information Industry Association and TechNet.

A Bureau of Industry and Security official acknowledged delay in BIS' proposed rulemaking for foundational technologies, saying she and other top Commerce Department officials expected the notice to have been published by now. “I personally thought foundational would be out faster than it is. It was not just higher-level people,” said Hillary Hess, BIS regulatory policy division director, at a Tuesday panel hosted by the American Bar Association. Hess and another official said in June the notice would be released soon (see 1907110044). Hess declined to give an updated timetable now. She briefly said of the proposal for emerging technologies that Commerce has been meeting with “a number of companies” to understand what emerging technologies are most important for U.S. industry and which technologies they’re interested in pursuing. Hess said Commerce created “technical teams” of engineers to tackle emerging tech categories. “They’re basically doing evaluations to look at what should be proposed for control and … what shouldn’t be,” Hess said. It’s possible the teams won’t see a need for new controls, she said. If Commerce issues controls on emerging technologies, Hess suggested the agency wants to do it soon: “We would like to get some stuff out the door.”

EchoStar appealed the U.S. Court of International Trade decision upholding denial by Customs and Border Protection of more than $276,000 in drawback claims from a video technology importer and exporter as untimely. The CIT said in June (see 1906180069) the date of filing was when a complete paper claim was submitted, not the electronic summary. The appellant/petitioner's brief is due Oct. 21, said docket 19-2299 for EchoStar v. U.S. in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. As of Friday, beyond a docketing notice (in Pacer), no additional documents were in that docket (in Pacer).

Regardless of who wins the 2020 presidential election, tech companies likely will have to change their supply chains and reverse the international approach to research and development, said Derek Scissors, an American Enterprise Institute China scholar. Apparel and other low-value goods manufacturers were already moving to cheaper countries in Asia, but consumer technology firms were happy in China before the trade war began, said Scissors in an interview. "You could easily get a Democratic administration that wants to get tech out of China." Joe "Biden's people say they want that," Scissors said. He said the next Democratic administration won't use broad-based tariffs, as President Donald Trump has. Scissors said the U.S. dominates in advanced microchip design, and policymakers should intervene to stop industrial espionage in that field. But he said for chipmakers, restrictions on cooperating with Chinese researchers also will likely mean fewer sales in China. "If you say to Intel: you cannot do any research and development with China, the Chinese are going to find Intel a lot less interesting." Scissors said if decoupling happens, which he hopes will, the most advanced chips would likely be assembled in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and maybe the Philippines. "The thing about China -- it's the end of a supply chain with tons of inputs where you make hundreds of billions of low-end consumer electronics every year," he said. "There's no other country that can replace that." Scissors said that scale might be found in Indonesia, Mexico, Vietnam or perhaps India.

Examining ways that a "natural person can contribute” to an artificial intelligence invention and qualify to be a "named inventor” on the patent is one of about a dozen issues on which the Patent and Trademark Office seeks comment said a Federal Register notice Tuesday. PTO “has been examining AI inventions for decades and has issued guidance in many areas,” it said. It now wants to “engage with the innovation community and experts in AI to determine whether further guidance is needed,” it said. The goal is to “promote the predictability and reliability of patenting such inventions and to ensure that appropriate patent protection incentives are in place to encourage further innovation in and around this critical area,” it said. PTO has taken no position on AI patenting, nor is it “predisposed to any particular views,” the agency said. Comments are due Oct. 11, and PTO prefers them to AIPartnership@uspto.gov.

Comments are due Aug. 29 on a ban Velodyne Lidar seeks on imports of 3-D lidar devices that allegedly infringe its patents and are subsequently incorporated into autonomous vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, industrial machines and robotics, said Wednesday’s Federal Register. “Velodyne seeks to protect itself and its United States operations from two foreign companies” -- Hesai Photonics Technology and Suteng Innovation Technology (aka RoboSense) -- “that took its revolutionary patented invention, incorporated it into their competing products, and are injecting those infringing products into the United States market,” Velodyne said in a complaint filed Aug. 15 with the International Trade Commission. Velodyne seeks a limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders banning import and sale of infringing devices from Hesai and RoboSense. "RoboSense will actively respond and follow the standard legal process, and will respect the final judgment," emailed a spokesperson, saying the lawsuit targets "a small number of our products in the U.S. market only." Hesai didn't comment Wednesday.

Qualcomm granted LG Electronics a global patent license to develop, manufacture and sell 3G, 4G and 5G “single-mode and multimode complete devices," it said Tuesday. The agreement builds on Qualcomm’s “long-standing technology relationship” with LG, it said. Financial details weren’t disclosed, but the agreement “is consistent with Qualcomm’s established global licensing terms,” it said.