Cyber
The long-awaited Senate comprehensive cybersecurity legislation, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, was officially introduced this afternoon by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). And Sen. Lieberman’s Homeland Security Cmte. will hold a legislative hearing on Thursday.
SIIA issued a statement in response to the legislation expressing support for the significant progress in striking a balance between preserving innovation and identifying and regulating critical infrastructure, and urging swift, bipartisan support for legislation that would advance critical cybersecurity priorities to immediately enhance our cybersecurity preparedness.
IT Implications of President’s FY13 Budget
The President’s FY13 budget proposal introduced this week includes a couple key items that reflect the continued support for IP protection. First, the proposal includes a $5 million increase in funding to combat piracy and counterfeiting, raising the total spent to combat IP crimes by the USG to $40 million. Also, the budget provides support for the PTO’s new fee-setting authority and termination of fee diversion, estimating that the PTO will collect $2.9 billion in 2013, but any amount received in excess of $2.9 billion and deposited in shall remain available to the PTO until expended.
On the Fed. IT funding front, U.S. government spending on information technology would decline 1.2 percent next fiscal year, as part of the efforts to “do more with less,” increasing efficiency through the use of cloud computing, shared services and mobile technology.
Regardless of the budget politics in an election year, these are both very significant elements, as they serve as markers for where the Obama Administration sees funding priorities that affect software and digital content companies.
Patent Reform
The US Patent & Trademark Office released notices of proposed rulemakings last week regarding a number of key provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, including review of the new inter partes and post grant rules. Comments must be submitted by early April. Proposed fees for these procedures, as well as higher fees for applications, also were introduced, with the goal of reducing the patent backlog. The PTO will hold a public hearing on fee proposals on February 15 at the PTO, and February 23 in Sunnyvale, CA, and the deadline for comment on the proposals is February 29th.
ACTA
With the European Parliament is scheduled to consider ACTA in June, the past few weeks have seen several EU member states, including Poland, Latvia and the Czech Republic, withdraw their intent to ratify ACTA or delayed the decision in their national parliaments in response to domestic protests. On February 10th, in anticipation of these protests the European Commission released a “Factsheet on the Transparency of ACTA Negotiations.”
Ed-Tech Interoperability Standards
On Monday, SIIA released a Primer on K-20 Education Interoperability Standards that provides a framework for understanding interoperability standards that impact educational data, digital content, and software applications. The primer is a component of SIIA’s ongoing efforts to help inform on technical issues that are important to the success of educational technologies.
David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy.