OVERNIGHT TECH: Barton to unveil online poker bill Friday

THE LEDE: Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) will hold a press conference to unveil his bill to legalize online poker on Friday as we reported last week. Co-sponsors include Reps. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), John Campbell (R-Calif.), and Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) with more names expected. The lawmakers argue the issue is one of personal freedom and the government shouldn’t stop people from playing a “game of skill.”

The bill will head to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which appears more open to the prospect currently than the House Financial Services Committee, which passed an online gambling bill last year. Barton’s bill would require poker sites to register through the gaming commissions of states that currently permit gambling and create a federal body to oversee the industry. More details here.

{mosads}House passes patent reform: The House approved the America Invents Act Thursday evening after the bill survived a number of late amendments that would change central provisions of the bill as well as complaints from lawmakers that it would violate the Constitution. Like a bill that overwhelmingly passed the Senate earlier this year, the bill would switch the U.S. from a first-to-invent patent system to a first-to-file system. That change is opposed by small inventors and expected to benefit large firms that apply for patents regularly; unsurprisingly many of those firms rushed to praise the House. The bill will now likely head to conference to be reconciled with the Senate version.

Reactions:

House Judiciary chairman and author Lamar Smith (R-Texas) – “No longer will American inventors be forced to protect the technologies of today with the tools of the past. H.R. 1249 brings our patent system into the 21st century, reducing frivolous litigation while creating a faster and more efficient process for the approval of patents,” Smith said. “The current patent system is broken. The average wait time for patent approval in the U.S. is three years. The PTO has a backlog of 1.2 million patents pending approval.”

House Judiciary ranking member John Conyers
(D-Mich.) – “What the House passed today is not the comprehensive reform
that our country needs. The bill benefits large multinational
corporations and banks at the expense of innovators, and it fails to
include the most important reform we could have enacted – ending the
diversion of fees from the Patent and Trademark Office.”

Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) – “I commend Chairman Smith, Mr. Hoyer, and others for their work to create and pass true patent reform. I particularly thank my friend from Vermont, Congressman Welch, for his strong support for the American Invents Act. The House-passed bill differs slightly from what the Senate approved overwhelmingly in March, but the core reforms are consistent. Just as the Senate did when it passed the America Invents Act in a significant 95-5 vote, we should come together and approve this bill once again, and send it to the President’s desk to be signed into law.”

TechAmerica President Phil Bond – “With House passage of the America Invents Act, the attention of the innovation community now immediately turns to the conference committee to resolve differences between House and Senate Bills. We believe that a permanent end to fee diversion and specifically the Senate-approved amendment by Senator Coburn is an imperative part of the final bill. TechAmerica intends to write to Senate leadership to reinforce our position that all user fees collected by the PTO should be used to fund the agency and not be re-directed for non-PTO purposes.”

VCs oppose PROTECT IP Act: More than 50 venture capitalists from 40 firms wrote to the Senate Thursday voicing opposition to Sen. Leahy’s PROTECT IP Act, arguing the bill would “stifle investment in Internet services” and “throttle innovation.” The investors claim they appreciate the bill’s goal of reducing online copyright infringement but say it goes too far in forcing third parties to block DNS and other services to some sites without adequate oversight.

Quote: “Congress should not chill investment and reduce incentives to work on private sector solutions. Instead, we encourage Congress to focus on making it easier to license works and bring new, innovative services to market.”

{mosads}FTC prepares to subpoena Google for antitrust probe: The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday the Federal Trade Commission is planning to serve Google with subpoenas
as part of an antitrust investigation into whether the firm has abused
its dominance of the search market. The FTC’s nascent probe is the most serious antitrust investigation of
the search giant to date and will examine whether Google uses its
search business to drive consumers to its other products and services. Rep. Albio Sires (D-N.J.) was among those praising the FTC for taking action.

Hacker behind iPad data breach pleads guilty: The hacker behind the high-profile breach last year at AT&T that
jeopardized the personal information of more than 100,000 iPad users
pleaded guilty in federal court on Thursday to charges of hacking and
identity theft. Daniel Spitler, 26, of San Francisco admitted to
being a member of the hacker group Goatse Security and said he and other
hackers wrote a script to steal email addresses from AT&T’s
servers, including
those of senior government and military officials.

ICYMI:

Hispanic Arts group backs AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile because of the former’s tougher stance on IP protection.

The FCC adopted new rules to crack down on caller ID spoofing.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has joined Facebook’s board.

Intel received antitrust approval to purchase the bankrupt Nortel’s assets.

The House Appropriations Committee is wading into the LightSquared dispute.

This post was updated Friday, June 24 at 2:18 p.m.