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A moratorium on taxation of Internet access should become permanent, said CTIA and the Internet Tax Freedom Act Coalition.

Broadcast lawyer John Hane warned that the incentive auction could fail if the FCC doesn't get things right. "There are many, many, many paths to failure and only a fairly narrow set of paths to success," said Hane of Pillsbury Winthrop during a panel at an Institute for Policy Innovation conference.

ALEC wants to provide ideas of how legislators can act next, said task force private-sector Chairman Bartlett Cleland, IPI policy counsel. "It is critically important for the future of healthcare that state legislators start understanding what they can do and start to act, so we can drive down healthcare costs and get healthcare to more people."

The American Legislative Exchange Council will look at draft model legislation restricting warrantless cellphone tracking. "From the private sector, one thing we enjoy is a round of 'future think,'" IPI's Bartlett Cleland said, cautioning against focusing on the "tyranny of the immediate."

Patent pools were designed to save innovators time and money by establishing cross-licensing agreements for specific technologies, but patent pools can be abused by exploiting the system to maximize profits

Patent pools were designed to save innovators time and money by establishing cross-licensing agreements for specific technologies, but patent pools can be abused by exploiting the system to maximize profits, said IPI.

A group of small mobile phone carriers in the United States has sent a letter to the U.S. International Trade Commission expressing opposition to a possible sales ban of Samsung Electronics' mobile devices in the country.

Assistant U.S. Trade Representative-Intellectual Property and Innovation Stan McCoy is optimistic that negotiators of the Trans-Pacific Partnership can come to a "world-class result" for "strong and balanced" intellectual property protection, despite ongoing debate over the rigidity of those protections, he said at an IPI forum commemorating World Intellectual Property Day.

While Rep. Steve Womack takes another crack at legislation that would help states collect taxes on Internet sales, IPI's Bartlett Cleland warns the measure would hurt businesses. Cleland says businesses will shoulder the burden of increased audits and additional tax payments that should be collected by states "who can't figure out how to clean up their own messes internally" and collect the tax from customers.

If passed, the MFA will increase taxes as “multiple jurisdictions lay claim to the same transaction and demand payment,” said IPI's Bartlett Cleland. The proposal “does away with any requirement that a business have a physical connection in a jurisdiction before it can be required to levy taxes on its sales.”