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The legislative express train that has been patent reform reached top speed in the House of Representatives this afternoon, and its next scheduled stop will be the United States Senate. By a vote of 325-91, the House passed H.R. 3309, the Innovation Act, a bipartisan bill advanced by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) to curb abusive litigation by patent trolls. Make no mistake, today’s [...]
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Were Grace Hopper still alive, she’d turn 107 years young on Monday, December 9th. Grace Hopper, as I’m sure you know, served in the United States Navy with great distinction. She first enlisted in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) program in 1943, in the midst of the Second World War, and served in various roles in the Navy until 1986, when she retired as the oldest active-duty [...]
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The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) is an outdated law. Since it was enacted in 1986, the technological advances have been tremendous. ECPA must be updated so that law enforcement is required to obtain a warrant in order to gain access to online content. ITI urges Congress to make ECPA reform a priority and pass a clean reform bill that wouldn’t allow civil agencies to get a pass on a [...]
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There has been a lot of debate in the media recently about who or what is to blame for the Healthcare.gov failure. The saying “success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan” comes to mind. Practically everyone in government and the private sector with a role in Healthcare.gov has been under the media’s microscope. The media’s finger-pointing aside, the fact is that no one individual or office [...]
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Global industry sent a strong message this week to China’s senior-most leadership: return to the negotiating table to expand product coverage of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) with “a more forward-leaning, ambitious approach.” Communicated in a December 4 letter to Premier Li Keqiang, the heads over 40 associations from the around the world called on China to “actively help steer the negotiations…to [...]
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The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) is one of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s major pieces of legislation this year. The bill is designed to bring greater efficiency and technology into the federal acquisition system, and he should be commended for taking on the daunting task of acquisition reform. Originally introduced earlier [...]
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Data centers are the workhorses of the latest wave of ICT innovation: cloud computing, the rapid expansion of mobile technology, and the shift from physical media to digital streaming. None would be possible without data centers. However, there is a consequence, namely the growing energy and water use of data centers and the stress that places on the larger system. Industry has responded swiftly by [...]
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This week has seen positive developments on patent reform in both the House and Senate, suggesting the potential for even more progress in 2014. On Wednesday, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) secured a strong bipartisan House Judiciary Committee vote of 33-5 to pass the Innovation Act. This important legislative effort to curb abusive litigation by patent trolls picks up momentum as [...]
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Dateline GENEVA: After much erratic and obstructionist behavior by China over the course of the last ten days, it has just blown up the negotiations to expand product coverage of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA). In a high-level meeting between the United States and China this afternoon, Beijing’s negotiators said they have zero mandate to move off their tepid list of import-sensitive products. [...]
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Dateline GENEVA: At an ambassadors’ meeting this afternoon here in Geneva, negotiations to expand product coverage of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) were extended an additional two days until close of business on Friday. The reason for the extension is China, which has refused to seriously engage in the multilateral negotiations while virtually everyone else at the table has bent over [...]
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