Protests must be filed at the port where the contested CBP decision was made in order to be eligible for a subsequent court challenge, ruled the Court of International Trade on Feb. 14 as it dismissed an importer’s tariff classification suit. The regulatory requirement that “protests shall be filed with the port director whose decision is protested” is a requirement for CIT jurisdiction, it said. Just as with the requirements that protests be filed on time and duties be paid before the trade court can take up a challenge, so must the importer meet the requirements of CBP’s “place-of-filing” regulation, it said.

The Food and Drug Administration’s proposed rule on the Foreign Supplier Verification Program leaves too much to the imagination and could impose burdensome requirements on importers, said the American Association of Exporters and Importers in comments recently submitted to the agency (here). “A close reading of the lengthy and complex rule reveals that many fundamental questions remain unanswered,” said AAEI. Worried about provisions of the proposed rule that could prove costly, including management and recordkeeping requirements, “some AAEI members that import only small amounts of food have indicated that they will cease future imports of food if the FSVP Rules are implemented in their current form,” the group warned.

The Court of International Trade on Jan. 31 rejected a Commerce Department ruling on the extent of antidumping duties on petroleum wax candles from China, casting yet more uncertainty onto the agency’s current interpretation of the scope of that order. The court held Commerce based its ruling, which found over 200 novelty holiday candles imported by Trade Associates Group to be subject to AD duties, on an overbroad reading of the scope. In Commerce’s view, which had been codified in a 2011 “scope clarification,” the scope applied to all candles regardless of shape, unless specifically excluded from duty liability. CIT found that reading too expansive, finding a list of shapes of candles in the scope language limited the coverage of AD duties only to candles of those shapes.

A committee that advises the Court of International Trade is beginning a preliminary look into the possibility of a “small claims” customs court, according to several industry lawyers. The CIT Advisory Committee on Rules recently created a subcommittee to look into the feasibility of the idea, which could make it cheaper and quicker for importers to challenge some CBP classification decisions that currently don’t merit the time and money required for litigation.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 24 gave a green light to refunds of antidumping and countervailing duty cash deposits collected during the investigations on utility scale wind towers from China. The domestic Wind Tower Trade Coalition had appealed from the Court of International Trade, after the lower court denied an injunction preventing liquidation of wind towers from China entered between June 6, 2012, and Feb. 12, 2013. CAFC agreed with the lower court’s decision, finding the lawsuit unlikely to succeed, and refused to grant a preliminary injunction putting liquidation on hold.

The California Attorney General second draft of recommendations for complying with the state’s Do Not Track (DNT) law makes improvements over the first draft, but doesn’t address some central concerns, said lawyers and industry representatives in interviews Thursday. In effect since Jan. 1 (CD Jan 2 p4), the law requires websites and mobile applications to state in their privacy policies whether they respond to a DNT mechanism and include notice of “the possible presence of other parties conducting online tracking,” according to the draft. But with no agreed-upon DNT definition (CD Dec 27 p4), companies have struggled to understand exactly what they are responding to and how to explain that in their privacy policies, said lawyers and an e-commerce representative. The second draft -- emailed to stakeholders Wednesday night -- helps elucidate some of these concerns, but didn’t include legal protections some would like to see.

The California Attorney General second draft of recommendations for complying with the state’s Do Not Track (DNT) law makes improvements over the first draft, but doesn’t address some central concerns, said lawyers and industry representatives in interviews Thursday. In effect since Jan. 1 (WID Jan 2 p1), the law requires websites and mobile applications to state in their privacy policies whether they respond to a DNT mechanism and include notice of “the possible presence of other parties conducting online tracking,” according to the draft. But with no agreed-upon DNT definition (WID Dec 27 p1) , companies have struggled to understand exactly what they are responding to and how to explain that in their privacy policies, said lawyers and an e-commerce representative. The second draft -- emailed to stakeholders Wednesday night -- helps elucidate some of these concerns, but didn’t include legal protections some would like to see.

The Court of International Trade on Jan. 22 rejected arguments from both sides in a customs valuation dispute between the government and an importer of apparel purchased from a related party. CIT ruled against the government’s defense of CBP’s use of transaction value, because it didn’t meet CBP’s own requirement of proof that prices were set according to normal industry pricing behavior. But the court also spurned claims by importer Macclenny Products that the entries of men’s suit jackets from Nicaragua should have instead been appraised using deductive value, because the company didn’t show that the related-party transaction actually affected the price.

The American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA) again urged the Consumer Product Safety Commission to take a tough stance on products that violate federal flammability standards for children’s sleepwear, in a letter dated Jan. 6. According to the trade group, sleepwear that violates the CPSC standard continues to “flood the market, appearing in every retail channel.”

Tweets, Facebook posts and Google Plus comments have all become endorsement fodder for advertisers due to changes in social media companies’ terms of use. The change has raised privacy and copyright questions, lawyers, academics and privacy advocates told us. Most recently, the concerns were highlighted by a lawsuit against Facebook, the use of a movie critic’s tweet in an ad, and a change to Google’s policy. Companies and marketers contend the changes allow more targeted ads that benefit consumers.