Companies can’t challenge CBP classification decisions on behalf of the manufacturers that use their products as inputs, even if they may suffer indirect injury in the form of lost sales, ruled the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Feb. 3 in an seesawing case on yarn made by Best Key (here). Instead, they must have suffered direct injury to themselves in order to challenge CBP classification decisions in court, said CAFC as it reversed a February decision from the Court of International Trade.
Court of International Trade
The United States Court of International Trade is a federal court which has national jurisdiction over civil actions regarding the customs and international trade laws of the United States. The Court was established under Article III of the Constitution by the Customs Courts Act of 1980. The Court consists of nine judges appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate and is located in New York City. The Court has jurisdiction throughout the United States and has exclusive jurisdictional authority to decide civil action pertaining to international trade against the United States or entities representing the United States.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 26 - Feb. 1:
CBP can require a trademark be registered or pending in order for a product to qualify for less stringent country of origin marking rules, said the Court of International Trade on Jan. 28 (here). JBLU challenged CBP’s decision to require its jeans be labeled “made in China” adjacent to and at a similar size as the company’s trade name, C’est Toi Jeans USA, for several entries filed before the company submitted its trademark application to the PTO. It argued CBP should follow the Lanham Act’s definition of trademark as including trade names even if no PTO application has been filed. But CIT found the law and regulations to be silent as to what constitutes a trademark for marking purposes, and decided CBP’s interpretation is a reasonable one.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 19-25:
“Control surfaces” used by professionals in the audio industry to record and edit music are not classifiable in the tariff schedule as automatic data processing machines, ruled the Court of International Trade on Jan. 22 (here). The consoles imported by Digidesign have functions other than sending signals or data to a computer, like adjusting signals fed in by microphones. They also “work in conjunction” with the automatic data processing machine, defined in CIT’s ruling as “functioning or operating in a specified manner while joined together for a common purpose.” Meeting both the conditions of a note to chapter 84, the consoles are excluded from classification as automatic data processing machines, and are instead classifiable as “other” electrical machinery, said CIT.
The Court of International Trade on Jan. 21 ordered a Louisiana company to pay a $10,000 fine, plus interest, for transacting customs business without a license (here). The court found Freight Forwarder International (FFI) paid duties and fees on behalf of its clients. While the company had a licensed customs broker on staff, the company itself wasn’t licensed as a corporation, ruled CIT.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 12-18:
All drawback entries filed before Dec. 3, 2004 deemed liquidated one year later and can no longer be reviewed by CBP, said the Court of International Trade on Dec. 13 as it ruled in favor of Ford Motor Company in a long-running dispute over a series of decade-old drawback claims (here). A law passed by Congress in 2004 providing for deemed liquidation of drawback entries also had the effect of cleaning out the backlog of claims existing at the time, regardless of whether the underlying import entries had liquidated, said the court.
The Court of International Trade announced on Jan. 15 a change to its rules on filing briefs in court cases involving antidumping and countervailing duties under 28 USC 1581(c) (here). The amendment to the court’s Standard Chambers Procedures (here), approved on Dec. 22, restricts the number of pages lawyers should include in documents attached as appendices to case briefs. The change takes effect Jan. 28.
An importer’s aborted first attempt at filing a court challenge didn’t stop the clock on the statute of limitations, ruled the Court of International Trade on Dec. 13 as it dismissed part of the importer’s case (here). American Power Pull Corp., an importer of hand trucks, challenged the denial of two protests by CBP. The company had filed its complaint well past the 180-day deadline for challenging one of the protests, and an earlier complaint on the same protest didn’t extend the deadline for filing suit, said CIT.