Cable operators filing FCC Form 1210 can raise the non-external portion of their rates by a factor of 1.0121 percent for Q2 to account for inflation, and those filing Form 1240 can use an inflation factor of 1.023, a Media Bureau public notice said Monday.

BMG wants $10.48 million in attorney's fees and $2.92 million in expenses from Cox Communications, calling its copyright infringement legal fight with the cable company "exactly the sort of case where a Court should award fees and expenses." In a motion (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, BMG called Cox "a willful infringer that spent years crafting a sham (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) 'safe harbor' defense ... [and] paired it with a host of baseless legal arguments and constant efforts to prevent discovery." In a separate motion (in Pacer) Friday, Cox asked for $71,835 in attorney's fees from plaintiff Round Hill Music, plus $35,000 for work on the motion and reply itself. BMG's motion accused Cox of forcing "near constant discovery litigation" and pointed to its failure to identify millions of infringement notices it received but deleted in response to a BMG interrogatory. BMG said Cox witnesses evaded questions and were unforthcoming. BMG said Cox attempted to focus discovery on Rightscorp conduct rather than its own, seeking every document BMG had related to Rightscorp and voluminous discovery on Rightscorp itself. BMG also said Cox compressed line spacing in violation of local rules "to squeeze every possible argument" into a motion for summary judgment and then "claimed it was confused about the meaning of 'double-spaced' though every single document Cox filed through the first eight months of litigation maintained proper line spacing." Absent "a fee award, the costs of litigation will consume much of the value of the jury's verdict," BMG said. Cox said Round Hill didn't own the copyrights underlying the multitudes of copyright infringement notices that came from Rightscorp, but "Round Hill came into this Court and sued Cox anyway ... then prevaricated throughout discovery." While "few things in this lawsuit have been simple or clear cut, Cox's entitlement to reasonable fees for the defense against Round Hill is manifest," it said. Cox is appealing the $25 million verdict awarded BMG (see 1608190030). Cox and Round Hill didn't comment Monday.

The makers of a Star Trek fan film produced more than 31,000 pages of documents for Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios, but those programmers suing them have only "trickled in documents ... after the agreed upon exchange date had passed, and produced far less than what Defendants have provided," said Axanar Productions and principle Alec Peters in a joint stipulation (in Pacer) on defendants' motion to compel discovery. Paramount/CBS sued in 2015, alleging copyright violations of the Star Trek universe in the Prelude to Axanar film that was distributed free online. In their motion filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Axanar/Peters said they want documents and testimony about financial information on the alleged damages, plus information needed to investigate the Paramount/CBS allegations of willful infringement and chain of title information related to allegations of ownership. The plaintiffs in their preliminary statement in the joint motion called the Axanar/Peters claims "argumentative, self-serving and deliberately misleading." Paramount/CBS said Axanar/Peters are trying to compel production of documents "that do not exist," and in many cases, the plaintiffs agreed to provide the requested information.

Viacom board members Thomas May, Eversource Energy chairman, and Nicole Seligman, former president of Sony Entertainment, will head a special committee to evaluate the request by shareholder National Amusements that Viacom explore a transaction with CBS (see 1609290077), Viacom said in a news release Friday. The committee hired Debevoise & Plimpton as independent legal adviser, the company said.

Scripps' streaming video humor brand Cracked launched a video channel of daily videos and ongoing series on Roku, including Roku-exclusive content, the company said in a news release Thursday. Scripps said Cracked already is available on Pluto TV and Xumo.

National Amusements, the majority shareholder of CBS and of Viacom, is urging a combination of the two, Viacom said in a news release Thursday. Viacom said it expects its board to form a special committee of independent directors to consider the request. In the letter to Viacom, National Amusements said such a deal "might offer substantial synergies that would allow the combined company to respond even more aggressively and effectively to the challenges of the changing entertainment and media landscape." In a note to investors Thursday, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker said, "CBS (and particularly CEO Les Moonves) is in the driver's seat here."

Cox Communications and Warmington Residential said they held a smart home event in Rancho Mission Viejo, California, Wednesday to showcase gigabit internet speed and the products and activities it enables. Future homes will have an increasing number of Wi-Fi-enabled devices, and “it will become imperative for everyone in the household to experience the same level of connectivity,” said Sam Attisha, Cox region manager-California, in a news release. Cox's residential gigabit internet service is 100 times faster than the average speeds offered in the U.S., said the provider. Today's average household connects six devices to the internet, expected to increase to 50 devices by the year 2022, Cox said. The event highlighted next-generation technologies including virtual reality and telehealth. The model home will be open to the public Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT, it said.

The increased convergence of wireless and wireline networks -- due to the wireline backhaul needed to support the numerous 5G wireless cell sites and the increased access of wireline networks by wireless devices -- will give the cable industry a particularly big advantage in wireless due to its wired infrastructure, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett emailed investors Wednesday: "Cable wins in wireless just as it has won in wired broadband." Cable networks already are in essence wired backhaul layers "with a wireless short-hop access layer," Moffett said, pointing to consumer use of wireless tech. "He who has the best wired network (i.e. the cable operators) will ultimately win in wireless," since it will be cheaper for cable operators to add a wireless access layer atop their existing wireline infrastructure than for wireless operators to do the reverse, Moffett said. Pointing to Comcast's plans for a wireless service rollout next year (see 1609200042), Moffett said the operator exercising its Verizon mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreement will likely be "just the first piece of Comcast's entry into the wireless business." The cable company will put as much traffic as it can over its own W-Fi network and likely buy spectrum in the current broadcast incentive auction and ultimate have a hybrid network that uses Verizon as fill-in, he said, saying Comcast likely will try to buy a national 20 MHz-wide block for as much as $9 billion. The company also likely will sell some spectrum in Telemundo/NBC duopoly markets, he said. Charter Communications -- which also has activated its Verizon MVNO -- might also enter a joint venture with Comcast to jointly build out the 600 MHz spectrum layer, with each adding its wire networks to provide the capacity layer in-region, Moffett said.

The number of lawsuits filed in federal courts about cable and satellite TV payments in FY 2016 is expected to be down 42 percent from FY 2016 and down 56.2 percent from FY 2011, said a report Wednesday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. TRAC said the first 11 months of FY 2016 saw 613 such suits, putting the year on pace for 669 suits. There were 1,158 a year earlier and 1,526 five years earlier, said TRAC, which is run out of Syracuse University. The suits usually involve restaurant and bar owners allegedly pirating signals by showing pay-per-view programs in their establishments without paying the commercial rate, said the clearinghouse. The amount of such litigation grew sizably in FY 2010 and 2011 and plateaued for a time before dropping notably in FY 2016, TRAC said. It said much of the litigation comes out of U.S. District Court in Houston, which had 101 of the 613 suits. That court also ranked first with the highest rate of filings, followed by U.S. District Court in Tulsa, Oklahoma, TRAC said.

Without issuing an opinion, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Judges Pauline Newman, Timothy Dyk and Richard Taranto affirmed a U.S. District Court ruling in a patent fight between Broadband iTV and Hawaiian Telecom, Oceanic Time Warner Cable and Time Warner Cable, said a judgment (in Pacer) issued Monday. BBiTV was appealing the Honolulu court's 2015 ruling on its patent violation litigation (see 1609260010). BBiTV didn't comment Wednesday. Charter Communications now owns TWC.