Technology

THE LEDE: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) will unveil an immigration bill that will boost the number of visas for highly skilled workers at an event Thursday morning. 

The Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills, called the Skills Act for short, includes many policy measures that the tech industry has lobbied for. Representatives from the Consumer Electronics Association and Compete America are slated to speak in favor of the bill at the event.  

Issa's bill is the third piece of immigration legislation that's been put forward in the House Judiciary Committee this year. Goodlatte has said he wants to tackle immigration reform in a piecemeal fashion by introducing bills that cover each issue in the larger debate. 

The Skills Act will be introduced before a bipartisan group of eight House members puts forward comprehensive immigration reform legislation, which will also cover modified rules for high-skilled workers. After months of secret negotiations, the bipartisan group reached an "agreement in principle" on legislation last week and its members are furiously working to finalize bill text.

The two separate bills have made tech companies question which piece of legislation will be put to a vote on the floor.

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The federal government should impose penalties on foreign companies that use intellectual property  (IP) stolen from American businesses via cyberattacks, according to a report released Wednesday by a commission co-chaired by former administration officials.

Among its policy recommendations, the report says the secretary of treasury should block foreign companies that regularly use or benefit from stolen American intellectual property from accessing the banking system in the United States.

"Protecting American IP should be a precondition for operating in the American market," the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property writes in the report. "Failure to do so ought to result in sanctions on bank activities, essentially curtailing U.S. operations."

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) introduced legislation on Wednesday aimed at cracking down on abusive patent litigation.

Numerous technology companies have complained in recent years about being threatened with lawsuits by firms that have no plans to create any products. The so-called "patent trolls" buy-up cheap patents, find companies using similar technologies and then threaten to bring them to court for infringement unless they agree to an expensive settlement.

Many companies agree to settle because the cost of fighting the charges in court would be so high.

A social media campaign for immigration reform kicked off on Wednesday with a series of Twitter town halls hosted by political officials like Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R).

The push is being sponsored by a bipartisan coalition that includes Organizing for Action, Republicans for Immigration Reform and the advocacy group co-chaired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch. The so-called March for Innovation social media campaign, or #imarch, will feature back-to-back events across various social media platforms, including Reddit and Google Plus.

Supporters of the virtual march, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, tweeted links to a website that lets people tell their senators on Facebook and Twitter to support immigration reform.

Issa's bill targets a program that has the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Dozens of House lawmakers joined together on Wednesday to introduce legislation that would bar employers from asking for their workers' passwords to Facebook or other social media accounts.

The Password Protection Act, authored by Reps. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.), would protect both current employees and job applicants. 

The lawmakers pushed similar legislation last year, and Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) have introduced their own bill on the issue, which would also apply the restriction to colleges and universities asking for student information.

Facebook announced on Wednesday that it has joined the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a human rights group made up of Internet companies, nonprofits and academics.

The social media giant is the sixth company to join the initiative, following Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others. 

GNI issues principles and guidelines to companies for responding to government requests in a way that protects free speech and privacy. Companies that join the coalition agree to independent assessments of their compliance with the standards.

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European leaders will discuss how to combat tax avoidance by companies like Amazon, Google and Apple, Reuters writes.  Read more...

The deal was a coup for the tech industry, which had been lobbying aggressively behind the scenes.

THE LEDE: Apple CEO Tim Cook fended off accusations of corporate tax dodging at Tuesday's Senate hearing and put forward his own plan for comprehensive tax reform.

"Unfortunately, the tax code has not kept up with the digital age," Cook said during the hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "The tax system handicaps American corporations in relation to our foreign competitors who don’t have such constraints on the free flow of capital."

Cook urged lawmakers to slash the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to the mid-20s and to adopt a single-digit tax rate on foreign earnings that companies bring back to the United States. He said tax reform legislation should also eliminate corporate tax expenditures and be revenue-neutral. 

He said those steps would encourage companies to invest in the United States, boosting economic growth.

Subcommittee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) pressed Cook on whether he would refuse to bring the company's profits back to the United States unless Congress cut the corporate tax rate.

Cook said he has "no current plan" to bring the company's billions in cash to the U.S. under the current rates.

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