#11: USITC, Section 337

USITC, Section 337

Today we heard about USITC section 337.   What is USITC and section 337?  The USITC stand for The United States International Trade Commission which is an independent, quasijudicial Federal agency with broad investigative responsibilities on matters of trade. The agency investigates the effects of dumped and subsidized imports on domestic industries and conducts global safeguard investigations.

Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, recently amended by the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), is an important means for combating unfair practices in the import trade and especially for enforcing U.S. intellectual property rights at the border. If imports are found to violate Section 337, an exclusion order will be issued to the U.S. Customs Service excluding these products from the United States.  Once a Section 337 investigation is instituted, it is assigned to an administrative law judge (ALJ). The ALJ conducts an on-the-record hearing, which is very similar to a trial, under the Administrative Procedure Act and issues an initial determination subject to full I.T.C. review. The complaining party ("the complainant"), the defending parties ("the respondents"), and the Commission Investigative Attorney may all present evidence at the hearing.

Now we have a basic understanding of the USITC and section 337.   I saw an interesting article about complaint 337-TA-868.  In early January, InterDigital filed a Section 337 complaint in the U.S. International Trade Commission against Huawei, Nokia, Samsung, and ZTE, accusing those companies’ 3G/4G-compliant smartphones and tablets of infringing several InterDigital patents (this is now ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-868).  Not sure what will happen now.