The International Trade Commission has instituted a section 337 patent-based investigation1 of certain strollers and playards pursuant to a complaint.
The fiscal year 2010 report to Congress on the International Trade Data System has is now posted to the ITDS website. This report includes information on the 1) status of ITDS implementation; 2) extent of participation in ITDS by other Federal agencies; 3) remaining barriers to any agencies participation; 4) consistency with the World Customs Organization; 5) recommendations for technological and other improvements to the ITDS; and 6) status of development, implementation and management of ACE within CBP.
The Federal Maritime Commission has issued a final rule, effective April 18, 2011, to create a new 46 Part 532 and amend Part 520 to make available to licensed non-vessel-operating common carriers (NVOCCs) a new, voluntary exemption from the requirement to publish rate tariffs, if they agree to Negotiated Rate Arrangements (NRAs) with their shippers.
The International Trade Administration has initiated an antidumping duty administrative review of wooden bedroom furniture from China (A-570-890) for the period January 1, 2010 - December 31, 2010, under which all subject entities are required to submit either a separate rate status certification or application by April 29, 2011 or receive the China-wide entity rate of 216.01%.
The International Trade Commission has instituted a section 337 patent-based investigation1 of certain set-top boxes, and hardware and software components thereof pursuant to a complaint.
The International Trade Commission has instituted a section 337 patent-based investigation1 of certain liquid crystal display devices, products containing same, and methods for using the same pursuant to a complaint.
The International Trade Administration has initiated administrative reviews of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders below, for certain specified companies listed in the initiation notice.
The Food Safety and Inspection Service has issued a proposed rule to apply the continuous inspection requirements of the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA)1 to imported and domestic catfish and catfish products. FSIS states that this proposed rule would, among other things, require imported catfish to be (i) inspected under a foreign system that is equivalent to that of the U.S. and (i) from establishments that the foreign inspection authority has certified as complying with U.S. requirements.
Appellate filings in the P2P infringement case against Joel Tenenbaum are winding down, with the defense arguing in a reply brief that his Boston jury was left “rudderless” by a judge’s instructions. Harvard professor Charles Nesson, the controversial lawyer for grad student Tenenbaum, told the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston that the original $675,000 verdict resulted from U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner’s failure to impart “judicial wisdom” to the jury in how it should assess damages under the Copyright Act. Gertner later reduced damages to $67,500, but Tenenbaum’s team said he deserved a new trial (WID July 13 p3). Judges can’t rely on “mere repetition of the statutory language in their instructions to juries,” Nesson said. Befitting the professor’s idiosyncratic style, the filing includes a graph showing the RIAA’s share of copyright litigation in the years when it was filing new P2P infringement lawsuits. Copyright suits reached nearly 6,000 in 2005, the second full year of the RIAA campaign and double the average from the previous 10 years, Nesson said. Only two cases have fully gone through trial, and though the RIAA stopped filing new suits, its campaign spurred new bursts of infringement suits from plaintiffs such as the Copyright Enforcement Group and U.S. Copyright Group against downloaders, website operators and bloggers, the filing said. “The combination of an escalating number of similar lawsuits and a dearth of on-point caselaw means that this Court’s decision could potentially shape the interactions between consumers and media content providers for years to come.” Section 504 of the Copyright Act, dealing with infringement and remedies, was never meant to apply to “noncommercial” consumers, as opposed to commercial bootleggers, Nesson said. The statutory penalties available under Section 504 don’t give the RIAA “carte blanche to levy windfall judgments without proving any harm whatsoever,” he said. Gertner’s $67,500 award is still “embarrassingly out of proportion” to the damage caused by sharing 30 songs, Nesson said. The RIAA’s emphasis on the “gigantic scale” of file-sharing actually argues against a large award against Tenenbaum specifically: The trade group’s own expert witness once estimated a U.S. audience of 40 million file-sharers, meaning each was responsible for about $250 of the recording industry’s $10 billion annual decline. Tenenbaum was “not any kind of filesharing ringleader or illicit software provider,” Nesson said.
Broker Power is providing readers with some of the top stories for February 14-18, 2011 in case they were missed last week.