Kate Tummarello

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said that he is hopeful his committee will consider his patent reform bill.

“As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I am committed to ensuring we move forward with meaningful legislation to support businesses and combat abuses in the patent system,” he said, adding that he “hopes” to begin consideration of a compromise patent reform bill. Negotiations continued, and no manager’s amendment was published by the close of business day.

“Weekend negotiations on this complex issue were positive, and I am confident we are closer to solidifying a bipartisan agreement that incorporates the ideas of many members,” Chairman Leahy said. He added that he scheduled the upcoming markup so that “all members [will] have the opportunity to debate this legislation.”

Tech companies are pushing federal regulators to get involved in the multiplying disputes over how they connect to Internet providers.

The industry and allied groups are looking for opportunities to push for equal treatment of Internet traffic in the wake of a court ruling in March that opened the door to the use of “fast lanes” for Web traffic. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler has said his agency wouldn’t look at the deals that websites strike with Internet providers -- called “interconnection” or “peering” arrangements -- in the agency's push to rewrite net neutrality rules.

Chairman Wheeler is keeping an eye on the issue, according to an agency spokesman. “Peering and interconnection are not under consideration in the Open Internet proceeding, but we are monitoring the issues involved to see if any action is needed in any other context,” he said.

Tech and advocacy groups say the FCC needs more information about the often-hidden deals, which were left untouched by the agency's first round of net neutrality rules. “We just don’t even know what’s going on in this market,” Public Knowledge Vice President Michael Weinberg said. “What we’ve been telling the FCC to do is figure out what’s happening” in the peering market, he said.

Major tech companies including Microsoft and Apple are teaming up to advocate for strong patent protections as patent reform efforts heat up on the Hill.

Microsoft, Apple and IBM joined with GE, Pfizer, DuPont and Ford to launch the Partnership for American Innovation "to highlight the value of intellectual property and patents to US jobs and the economy." The group will focus on promoting strong patent protections, highlighting the role of those protections in the global economy and pushing for the Patent and Trademark Office to be fully funded.

The group is being advised by former Patent and Trademark Office Director David Kappos, now a partner at Cravath, Swaine and Moore. Kappos said he has seen "firsthand the significant role the patent system plays in encouraging inventors, promoting investment in innovation, and creating jobs." “Now is not the time to gamble with America’s innovation engine -- once patent protections are eliminated, they cannot be restored," he said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) defended its practice of obtaining e-mails older than 180 days without a warrant.

SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White told the House Appropriations subcommittee on financial services that her agency protects people’s privacy when it uses subpoenas -- rather than warrants, which have a higher burden of proof -- to access emails.

Under the Electronic Privacy Communications Act, law enforcement officials do not need a warrant to access electronic communications that have been stored for more than three months. Attempts to update that law -- including from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Reps Kevin Yoder (R-KS), Tom Graves (R-GA) and Jared Polis (D-CO) -- have been largely supported by law enforcement agencies but have faced backlash from civil agencies, like the SEC.

Rep Yoder asked why law enforcement agencies need a warrant to access physical documents but not electronic communications.

“Paper documents versus the file folders contained in our email accounts all seem to ... have Fourth Amendment protections,” he said. As a civil agency, the SEC relies on subpoenas, not warrants, to obtain information for its investigations, SEC Chairwoman White said. She told Rep Yoder that the SEC’s investigatory practices have built-in privacy protections.

A coalition of tech advocacy groups is backing the Obama Administration's move to relinquish oversight of the technical side of the Web address.

"This move could help thwart government overreach in Internet governance, which would have devastating implications for human rights worldwide," the coalition said in a letter to the top Republicans and Democrats on the House Commerce Committee. Signatories include the Center for Democracy and Technology, Public Knowledge, the New America Foundation and Access.

The letter of support comes before a hearing on the topic at the House Commerce subcommittee on Technology. The hearing will focus on the Commerce Department's announcement that it will be handing over its oversight role of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the technical side of the domain name system. That system is currently managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) under a contract with the US government that must be renewed every two years and expires in September 2015.

Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said she will consider forthcoming recommendations to change the National Security Agency's (NSA) controversial phone surveillance program.

"If there are alternatives that preserve the operational effectiveness of the call records program and can address privacy concerns, I am certainly open to changes," Sen Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a vocal defender of the NSA, said in a statement.

The intelligence community and the Department of Justice are scheduled to present to President Barack Obama recommendations for reforming the NSA program that collects information about American phone calls, first exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in the summer of 2013.

The Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) repeated its calls for fixes to the current system for combatting online piracy and expressed optimism the system could be improved through a series of discussions with Internet companies being convened by the Commerce Department.

"We must create best practices that will allow the Internet to live up to its potential of fostering creativity and innovation, while also protecting the work of all kinds of creators," Ben Sheffner, the entertainment industry group's vice president of legal affairs, wrote in a blog post.

The Department of Commerce held the first in a series of meetings with copyright holders and Internet companies aimed at the "notice and takedown" system under current law.

Protections for Internet companies under copyright law are "being used as a free pass, making it a shield from taking responsibility to help the content community curb online infringement," Sheffner wrote. "Takedown must mean stay down," he said, adding that stakeholders at the recent Commerce meeting "recognized that the notice-and-takedown process must become both more efficient and more effective."

WhatsApp users don't want the social messaging service to be acquired by Facebook, privacy groups told the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), urging the agency to investigate the deal.

The privacy groups -- the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy -- added to their plea to the FTC to investigate the $16 billion deal from in early March 2014, citing comments from around the Internet.

"WhatsApp users continue to object to the proposed acquisition" and "believe that companies acquired by Facebook will lose the ability to keep user data private," the groups wrote. They pointed to comments on tech news sites decrying the deal between WhatsApp and Facebook. The comments quoted one Huffington Post user who said she "will most likely" delete WhatsApp if it is purchased by and integrated into Facebook, because the latter "isn't very big on privacy."

The groups added that the FTC's examination of the deal between Facebook and WhatsApp should be more rigorous than its examination of Google's acquisition of Nest, a company that makes algorithm-based home thermostats.

Comcast published its first transparency report, outlining the more than 24,000 federal, state and local government requests for user data it received in 2013.

"With every request ... we make sure it complies with applicable legal standards before we respond with any information," the company's Chief Privacy Officer Gerard Lewis said.

According to the report, Comcast received 24,698 requests for user data during 2013. Of those, 19,377 were subpoenas, which "typically seek basic customer account information" such as information to identify the subscriber, the report said. The company also said it received 1,333 warrants, which require probable cause and a judge's approval. Of those, 253 warrants sought the content of users' communications. Additionally, the company said it received 3,893 general court orders, which require a judge's approval and "typically seek historical information." It also received 93 requests for real-time information about email and phone exchanges and two requests for real-time access to the contents of those exchanges.

The Department of Commerce rejected charges that is abandoning the open Internet by relinquishing oversight of the domain name system.

"This announcement in no way diminishes our commitment to preserving the Internet as an engine for economic growth and innovation," Larry Strickling, administrator of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), said. "Our announcement has led to some misunderstanding about our plan with some individuals raising concern that the US government is abandoning the Internet," Strickling said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

He repeated his assurances that the US government won't hand over its oversight role to governments that have tried to restrict the open Internet. "I have emphasized that we will not accept a proposal that replaces NTIA’s role with a government-led or an inter-governmental solution," he said. "Until the community comes together on a proposal that meets these conditions, we will continue to perform our current stewardship role."