The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Oct. 3-9:
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Sept. 26 - Oct. 2:
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Sept. 19-25:
The Court of International Trade on Sept. 21 approved changes to its rules governing interrogatories and a new form for filing physical samples as evidence, it said (here). Other changes would also encourage parties to antidumping and countervailing duty cases to file a single joint appendix containing the parts of the administrative records cited by all parties. The amendments take effect Oct. 3.
Siemens agreed to pay a $175,000 fine for not disclosing two corporate felony convictions on a variety of Federal Communications Commission wireless license applications. The convictions stem from Siemens in 2008 pleading guilty to violating the accounting provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act through bribery of foreign government officials and in 2007 pleading guilty to a federal charge of obstruction of justice in a civil matter, the FCC Enforcement Bureau said in its Sept. 22 order (here). The failure to disclose "is particularly troubling because the underlying acts included misdeeds involving foreign telecommunications regulators," the bureau said, saying the consent decree includes that the two Siemens subsidiaries involved -- Siemens Corp. and Siemens Medical Solutions -- corrected the wireless application submissions on their own initiative and were fully cooperative with a bureau investigation afterward. Under the consent decree, the two also will develop and implement a compliance plan aimed at ensuring accurate future filing of wireless license applications, including a compliance manual and compliance training. Siemens didn't comment.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Sept. 12-18:
Chinese OEM Tomtop Group isn't an HDMI licensee, but is selling AV products with counterfeit HDMI logos over its e-commerce website and via third-party online retailers Alibaba, Amazon, DHGate, eBay and Taobao, HDMI Licensing alleged Sept. 15 in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. CBP has seized a “plethora” of HDMI-infringing Tomtop products entering the U.S. since 2012, but HDMI Licensing was unsuccessful in shutting down the illegal activity through cease-and-desist letters and other measures, the complaint said. The infringing products “bear markings that are identical, or confusingly similar, to,” actual HDMI logos and “provide consumers with a false assurance that the Infringing Products that they have purchased are reliable and conform to HDMI Licensing’s high standards and rigorous compliance testing when, in fact, they do not,” the complaint said. “HDMI Licensing has suffered and is continuing to suffer irreparable harm and financial injury as a result” of Tomtop’s behavior because the infringing products “are likely of a sub-standard quality, unreliable, and/or unable to deliver the exceptional signal and image quality offered by Licensed Products,” it said. Consumers who use the products “will falsely attribute” any “negative experiences” with them to HDMI Licensing, and that “is likely to erode the substantial goodwill that HDMI Licensing has spent years and millions of dollars in developing,” it said. Tomtop didn’t comment.
Dmitriy Melnik pleaded guilty in a Nevada federal court to conspiracy charges for trafficking in counterfeit contact lenses, the Department of Justice said in a news release (here). Melnik, who owned and operated Candy Color Lenses, knowingly importing counterfeit lenses from China and South Korea, the plea agreement said. Melnik then sold the products over the internet to customers without a prescription. "The prosecution is the result of an ongoing multiagency effort to combat counterfeit, illegally imported and unapproved contact lenses called Operation Double Vision," the DOJ said. "The FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations led the investigation, with significant support from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations."
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Sept. 5-11:
The Court of International Trade ordered an importer to pay $355,606.66 in penalties and unpaid duties for evading antidumping duties on candles it imported from China, in a ruling issued Sept. 7 (here). The judgment against NYCC 1959 comes on top of a $15,000 penalty assessed on the importer in 2015 for similar violations on 19 USC 1592 (see 1506220020). This time, the government alleged negligent violations in the importer’s failure to indicate on entry documentation that the merchandise was subject to the AD duty order on petroleum wax candles from China, costing the government $138,509.21 in unpaid duties. Once again, NYCC did not defend itself in court, so CIT found it in default and accepted the government’s allegations as fact.