FCC Commissioner Ness To Be Reconfirmed 

The Senate Committee on Science, Commerce, and Transportation showed support for Commissioner Susan Ness at their March 22, 2000 hearing. (Wireless Week 3/27/00, p.15) Ness declared 'that in the future, she intends to promote universal service and quick deployment of new technologies.' (And our teenager intends to clean her room! She has assured us that it will occur sometime in the future.) How long are we supposed to wait? The FCC has been collecting billions of dollars for the last 4 years, and spending it on anything but universal service (the build out of telephone service in underdeveloped areas.) (OTE 8/98: Critics B-Rate The E-Rate) Apparently, some members of the Senate aren't as patient as the FCC's oversight committee. Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WVA.) have introduced the Rural Telecommunications Act which will grant a 10% tax credit to companies that invest in broadband facilities. How quaint. Tax all of us, keep the money, and then use a big chunk of it to subsidize a Bell Atlantic backbone that all competitors will have to use to deliver service in those remote areas.     

In 1899, Charles Duell, Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office declared that "Everything that can be invented has been invented." Sometime in the last decade, the beliefs at the PTO shifted dramatically. The shift started with a patent on 'multimedia', continued through the Katz patents on routine computer telephone integration (CTI) principals (OTE 10/98: Patently Ridiculous) , and resulted in several recent 'method patents' on everything from a web 'shopping cart' to the way auctions were conducted. I began to feel confident that I could patent a ham sandwich if I were only to substitute mayonnaise for mustard. But, maybe it's not to be. The PTO (www.uspto.gov) has added a second review for applications and will require a much broader search of past practices and inventions known as prior art. (www.interactive-week.com April 3, 2000 p. 14.) The PTO issued 182 Internet-related method patents in 1998 and 399 last year. Opinions on the expected results vary. "Reduce the number of patents": Don Pelto patent attorney at McKenna & Cuneo; "little effect": Gregory Aharonian, editor and publisher of Internet Patent News; and "improve the quality [of patents]": Henri Petri, patent attorney at Howrey, Simon, Arnold & White. (www.infoworld.com 4/3/2000 p. 8) I'm glad that they cleared that up for us.
     

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