Five people from Iran, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were charged in two cases at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for violating the Arms Export Control Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, DOJ announced. They allegedly tried to obtain and export U.S. technology to Iran from 2005 to 2013.

The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated March 21 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):

The Court of International Trade in a confidential March 21 opinion upheld parts and sent back parts of the Commerce Department's final results in the first administrative review of the countervailing duty order on aluminum foil from China. In a letter to litigants, Judge Timothy Reif gave the parties until March 28 to review any confidential information in the opinion. The plaintiffs, led by Jiangsu Zhongji Lamination Materials Co., filed a five-count complaint in the proceeding to contest Commerce's calculation of the benchmark for the aluminum sheet, primary aluminum and land for less than adequate remuneration programs. The plaintiffs also contested the agency's decision to reject additional benchmark and land information from Jiangsu Zhongji (Jiangsu Zhongji Lamination Materials Co. v. United States, CIT # 21-00133).

The Commerce Department legally used a quarterly ratios methodology to set the quantity of subject mattresses sold by respondent Zinus Indonesia in an antidumping duty investigation, the Court of International Trade ruled on March 20. Ruling on seven specific challenges raised by Zinus Indonesia and AD petitioner Brooklyn Bedding, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves also upheld Commerce's decision to use surrogate financial information from Indian mattress maker Emirates Sleep Systems, calculation and application of a profit cap and adjustment to Zinus U.S.'s reported sales deductions.

NTIA faces questions about its request for comments released last week about a national spectrum strategy, which experts said appears to show work on the strategy at an earlier stage than expected. Several groups issued comments thanking the administration for moving forward, but former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the RFC was more like an FCC notice of inquiry than an NPRM (see 2303150066). O’Rielly said the document released offered less direction than expected, based on earlier comments by Scott Harris, tapped to lead work on the strategy.

Eyeing lunar communications infrastructure as a service, Lockheed Martin seeks FCC sign-off for 230 robotic landers, vehicles, spacesuits, landing systems and handheld terminals to use on the moon's surface. In an International Bureau application Wednesday, LM said the fixed and mobile lunar surface stations would communicate with each other, the company's ParsecTM lunar orbit satellites and other satellites, and earth stations using the UHF, S, X and Ka bands. LM said it's also planning for a second phase of lunar deployment that would involve licenses for space manufacturing and lunar surface mining assets and a third phase that would include a fission power plant and lunar surface habitat. It said its planned Parsec communications network would provide connectivity between the Earth and moon. The initial lunar mission likely would provide services to NASA, though "various international space agencies and governments as well as commercial entities have expressed a need for these services," LM said. It anticipates that for its proposed lunar communications network, customers would buy time the same way they buy time for an earth station under a service agreement.

NTIA is moving forward on its long-awaited national spectrum strategy, releasing a request for comments Wednesday that poses more than 60 questions on what that strategy should include. NTIA also scheduled two “listening sessions.” Comment deadlines are to come in a Federal Register notice, to be filed in NTIA-2023-0003.

The Court of International Trade should affirm the Commerce Department's remand results in order to allow a countervailing duty petitioner to potentially appeal aspects of those results to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, petitioner Daikin America said in its March 9 remand comments to the Court of International Trade (Gujarat Fluorochemicals Ltd. v. United States, CIT # 22-00120).

A June 2020 wireless infrastructure declaratory ruling merely clarified existing rules, the FCC told a federal appeals court Wednesday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month resumed a long-paused case on a League of California Cities challenge to the FCC decision clarifying shot clock and substantial change rules (see 2302070041). The FCC said in a brief it made no procedural errors and reasonably interpreted its rules (case 20-71765). "Wireless communications depend on a network of antennas and equipment placed on structures including towers, buildings, and utility poles,” the FCC wrote. “Local governments often use their zoning and land use authority to delay or block the installation of such equipment because of perceived aesthetic and other impacts." Congress, the agency said, has long sought to reduce such barriers.

A June 2020 wireless infrastructure declaratory ruling merely clarified existing rules, the FCC told a federal appeals court Wednesday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month resumed a long-paused case on a League of California Cities challenge to the FCC decision clarifying shot clock and substantial change rules (see 2302070041). The FCC said in a brief it made no procedural errors and reasonably interpreted its rules (case 20-71765).