U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued CSMS message #11-000319 stating that it is aware of several issues trade participants are encountering when submitting Importer Security Filing (ISF) data to CBP, in particular with the status notifications. There have been several cases of unsolicited status notifications to trade participants as well as a failure to send S1 bill on file messages where appropriate. CBP is currently working to address these issues. A follow up CSMS message will be issued once a fix has been implemented.
The Court of International Trade has ruled, due to untimely claims, it cannot grant relief to two companies that sought refunds of EU beef hormone dispute duties assessed on merchandise entered after the duties were retroactively terminated. According to the CIT, the companies' complaints were filed more than two years after the action that triggered accrual of their claims -- which was the date CBP liquidated the entries and not the date of the CAFC's 2010 ruling that the retaliatory duties were terminated by operation of law in 2007.
Broker Power is providing readers with some of the top stories for December 12-16, 2011 in case they were missed last week.
The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America has issued a White Paper on the need for customs brokers to transition to ACE now, saying "it's necessary, it's desirable, and it's urgent." NCBFAA's Board believes that it is no longer a question of whether to migrate to ACE, but when, and states that it is not feasible to wait for ACE to be finished before attempting to use it, nor is it plausible to rely on it being abandoned. While much work remains to be done, CBP has recently begun to show good progress and has adopted essentially all of the recommendations for functional development outlined in the initial NCBFAA White Papers. It is time for the brokerage industry to support that development and accept the inevitable.
The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls has posted an October 28, 2011 version of its frequently asked questions on commodity jurisdiction (CJ) which includes new information on providing supplemental information to an already submitted CJ via e-mail. DDTC has also added a new FAQ on uploading supplemental documents to the DS-4076 submission package.
Best Buy agreed to pay TiVo an undisclosed sum to settle a dispute stemming from a revenue-sharing agreement, TiVo disclosed in an SEC filing. TiVo had overpaid Best Buy under the pact, TiVo said.
The Court of International Trade has ruled in U.S. v. Inner Beauty Int'l (USA) Ltd., that Inner Beauty must pay a civil penalty of $39,549 for filing documents falsely stating that the country of origin of certain entries of women's undergarments was Hong Kong, instead of China. The CIT found Inner Beauty made an inadvertent error and was culpable for negligence because at the time of the entries, such merchandise was subject to an import quota.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has issued its 2011 report to Congress on China's compliance with its World Trade Organization commitments and provided testimony on its findings. USTR’s major concerns include China’s lack of intellectual property rights enforcement; pursuit of nationalistic policies such as subsidies, export restraints, unique standards, and indigenous innovation; lack of transparency and predictability, especially in agricultural trade; and apparent discrimination against foreign enterprises.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently announced that updates will be made to the CAMIR and ANSI X12 sea and rail interface guidelines that will set the stage for announcing an enforcement date to require residue (such as chemicals or other bulk goods) imported in containers considered to be instruments of international traffic (IIT) to be manifested, classified, and entered. CBP has delayed setting an enforcement date for this requirement since May 2011 pending the ability for Section 321 entries to be electronically filed in the rail mode.
Blu-ray players with the BD-Live and Bonus View features from a who’s-who list of 38 CE suppliers violate the patent of Walker Digital LLC, alleged Walker, a Stamford, Conn., R&D lab, in a complaint filed Dec. 5 at the U.S. International Trade Commission. The Walker patent (No. 6,263,505) for a “system and method for supplying supplemental information for video programs” was granted July 17, 2001. The same patent was the basis of a trade infringement lawsuit that Walker filed against many of the same companies on April 11 in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del. That case is still pending. The complaint at the ITC seeks an exclusion order barring the importation of the Blu-ray decks into the U.S. The next step is for the ITC to vote whether to open a patent investigation into the complaint, the commission said. The ITC seeks comments by Dec. 16 whether an exclusion order would harm the public.