Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Postal Service should establish performance objectives to assess effectiveness of ongoing pilots to target international mail for inspection based on electronic advance data, and should examine costs and benefits, GAO reported last week. CBP and USPS agreed with the recommendations. “Because CBP and USPS lack clear performance goals for these pilots, they risk spending additional time and resources expanding them prior to fully assessing the pilots’ success or failure,” GAO said. If electronic advance data remains limited, it could cramp effectiveness of CBP targeting and its ability to reduce the volume of mail it inspects, the report said.
Decusoft, Md7 and Tru Communication, doing business as TCPrinting.net, separately settled FTC allegations they misled consumers about participation in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement and failed to complete the certification process, said the agency in a Friday news release. Commissioners voted 2-0 to issue the administrative complaints and accept the consent agreements, which will be published in the Federal Register and available for comment through Oct. 10. The complaints are the first enforcement cases since the trans-Atlantic data protection and sharing arrangement was established in early 2016 (see 1602020040 and 1602040018). The companies are barred from misrepresenting their participation in privacy or data security programs sponsored by governments, self-regulatory regimes or standard-setting organizations and must comply with FTC reporting requirements, the release said. Tru Communication owner Jon Harris told us he used a third party to get self-certified with Privacy Shield and received a letter from the organization saying his small business was certified. But he said the letter may have meant he was certified with the third party, not Privacy Shield. "We got confused," he said. Harris said the website statement his company is Privacy Shield-compliant was removed. He said he isn't pursuing Privacy Shield certification because it's long and complicated and it was at the behest of one of his foreign customers. The other companies didn't comment. The agency said it also filed a complaint against Decusoft for falsely claiming participation in the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield framework. Almost 2,500 companies participate in the EU-US framework.
Intel won a reprieve from the European Court of Justice, which sided with the company's appeal against a lower court ruling that upheld a 1.06 billion euro ($1.26 billion) European Commission fine (see 0912170127). The ECJ said in a Wednesday news release it's sending the case back to the General Court to re-examine Intel's arguments whether its rebates to computer makers and a retailer restricted competition. "While this case concerns events that happened more than a decade ago, we have always believed that our actions were lawful and did not harm competition," said Intel General Counsel Steven Rodgers in a statement. In 2009, the EC alleged Intel "abused" its market dominance for x86 CPUs from 2002 to 2007, with a 70 percent market share that made it difficult for competitors like Advanced Micro Devices to enter, said the release. Regulators alleged that Intel gave rebates to Dell, Lenovo, HP and NEC as long as they bought from the chipmaker "all, or almost all, of their x86 CPUs," and also made payments to Germany-based microelectronics retailer Media-Saturn-Holding to exclusively sell computers with the x86 CPUs. The EC said Intel's strategy "induced the loyalty" of those companies, significantly reducing competition and consumer choice, and imposed the penalty, noted the ECJ. Intel appealed the EC decision but the General Court dismissed that action in 2014. Intel appealed to ECJ. The court said the lower court failed to examine "errors allegedly committed" by regulators on an "as efficient competitor" test, which Intel raised. ECJ said the lower court failed to analyze "whether the rebates at issue were capable of restricting competition." The high court rejected Intel's argument that the EC lacked territorial jurisdiction.
El Al Israel Airlines will use ViaSat's in-flight internet system for its in-flight connectivity services aboard its 16 new Boeing 787 Dreamliners, ViaSat said Wednesday. It said the El Al jets will connect to ViaSat-2 and the Ka-Sat satellite jointly owned with Eutelsat.
BBC is working on an “original interactive audio drama pilot” for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice devices that lets users “actively” play a role in plots. “We wanted to make it feel like you’re having a genuine, direct interaction with the other characters in the piece,” blogged BBC R&D producer Henry Cooke Wednesday. “We haven’t come across any other interactive stories like this on voice devices, and we’re excited to see how people respond.” BBC R&D built a “story engine” that will allow the pilot to be released “across different voice devices,” he said. “As far as we know, there aren’t many people developing cross-platform voice experiences in this way.”
Qualcomm will appeal a Seoul High Court decision denying the company’s application to stay a remedial order issued against it by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, it announced Tuesday. The court denied Qualcomm's stay application, saying its business won't suffer irreparable harm if the KFTC's order remains in effect, said the company. The order reviewed by the court doesn't invalidate existing license agreements, doesn't prohibit Qualcomm from entering into licenses for its standard essential patents and other patents at the device level and doesn't limit the royalties Qualcomm can seek or collect for SEPs under current or future licenses "as long the license agreements are consistent with Qualcomm's fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms commitments," it said. The order requires Qualcomm to engage in "good-faith negotiations with chip companies seeking a license and to negotiate possible amendments with current licensees upon request," it said.
The chief global spokesman for LG Electronics walked back pre-IFA remarks that the company stands a “big chance” of backing HDR10+ if the Fox, Panasonic and Samsung consortium that licenses HDR10+ next year as an open, royalty-free high dynamic range format shows the technology’s as good as Dolby Vision (see 1708310042). "It's too early to tell whether the HDR10+ format will become an industry standard or if it will be widely adopted by manufacturers or content providers,” LG spokesman Ken Hong emailed us Saturday. Hong told us he misunderstood our questions to be about the open HDR10 format, which LG already supports, not HDR10+, which rival Samsung developed and positioned as a competitive alternative to proprietary, royalty-bearing Dolby Vision technology. To create an HDR10+ “ecosystem,” Samsung “has been out there talking to everyone” about adopting the format, Bill Mandel, vice president-industry relations, at Samsung Research America, told Insight Media’s HDR10+ workshop Friday, also in Berlin. Samsung and its Fox and Panasonic partners “are really going to be doubling down,” he said. “We want to just invite everybody in to be adopters.”
Product launches at IFA gave a peek into the holiday selling season. Lenovo announced smart devices that “challenge the conventions” by incorporating artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Lenovo touted its “open approach” to partnerships and “building new experiences” in VR including Microsoft products and others' content. Lenovo also bowed the fourth-generation Moto X smartphone, with Amazon's Alexa. Qualcomm said more than 30 devices including smartphones support aptX HD audio, which supports 24-bit music quality.
In Shanghai, Taiwan, Tokyo and Berlin, Sharp Friday launched what it called an 8K Ecosystem dubbed “Horizon Broadened.” Calling it a “core strategy,” with the help of Foxconn, Sharp pushed 8K cameras, content editing, storing, and transferring and broadcasting. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou referred to 8K manufacturing when he announced the company’s $10 billion investment in a Kenosha, Wisconsin, plant in July (see 1707270018). Sharp also said it will participate in construction of a Foxconn global R&D center for future display technology in Shenzhen, China, where it will test 8K + 5G applications.
Sony Europe President Shigeru Kumekawa told an IFA news conference Thursday of a new 3D Creator tool "totally unique to Sony" that lets users “scan your entire face or head” in either a 180-degree or 360-degree mode to create a high-quality rendering in “under a minute.” It can be shared on social media or sent to a 3D printer, he said in Berlin.