Lawfirm

What makes for a valid protest is one of those ever green questions that generates litigation before the U.S. Court of International Trade. The most recent entry in the parade of cases on this topic is Ovan International Ltd. v. United States . The background here is simple. Carriage House Motor Cars came into ownership in the U.S. of a 1958 Royce Silver Cloud. As will happen when one owns a classic car, Carriage House planned to sell it at auction in the UK. The car did not sell and was returned to Carriage House in the U.S. with Ovan acting as the customs broker and the Importer of Record. At the time of entry, Ovan claimed the entry should be duty free under HTSUS item 9801.00.25. Customs issued a Notice of Action stating its intent to liquidate the vehicle as a dutiable passenger car at 2.5% There was some back and forth between counsel for Ovan and Carriage House on the one hand and Customs on the other hand. On February 22, 2013, Customs liquidated the entry as dutiable and Ovan,...

It is our time to get up to bat and before we are on the plate, we have mentally struck out and kick at the dirt in frustration for not hitting that ball as far as it could soar.  And so it goes with our life and the successes we could be enjoying if only the negative movie reel in our mind would sit down and shut up.  We get in our own way when it comes to reaching our fitness goals because we are too busy coming up with reasons why we are unable to make it happen.  Whether it stems from fear, frustration, laziness, depressed feelings or procrastination, our mind plays the biggest role in our ability to reach and maintain the fitness goals we desire.    There is no easy way to achieve success without hard work and lots of sweat, and we all need to put in the effort to get where we want in life.  My Dad always told me, “it is a tough world out there”, and we do not need to make it harder on ourselves by playing negative mind games that keep us from creating...

I am late on this ruling of the week. I have been busy milking my Walking Dead posting, which got picked up by my friends at Law and the Multiverse.  But, as far as I am concerned, I have another couple hours to go in this week. And, since most of you are probably busy watching the Academy Awards, I will sneak this post on to the site and give it a Hollywood connection. This will be quick because there is not much law in this week's ruling. The ruling is  NY N254307 (Jun 11, 2014) . As you may know, rulings issued by the NY office of Customs and Border Protection often do not contain a lot of legal analysis. Given the short deadline and volume of requests, this makes sense. My guess is that whoever wrote this particular ruling is a car buff. He or she certainly expended a lot of language to find that this particular 1969 Porsche 917K is classifiable not as a passenger car but as a collector's item. That was probably a good result for the importer, because the car was to b...

Brand : Oris Company : L&T Brand Analysis Count : # 555 L&T which is one of the largest player in the construction and infrastructure industry  launched their brand Oris on the consumer electrical space in 2013.  It was recently that the brand has started making noise in the media. Indian switches and distribution boards market in India is worth around Rs 2400 crore . The home segment itself is around Rs 1400 crore. The market is dominated by Anchor Electricals but now the market is flooded with national and international brands. Switches has now moved from functional to aesthetic product. Design of the switches and similar electrical products has become an important attribute. Oris claims that it is inspired by music and the switches looks like the keys of a piano. Earlier Roma brand of switches also claimed to be inspired by the piano keys. The USP of the brand is the LED indicator which is branded by L&T as Intelli-i that helps to identify the position of switc...

[Updated for clarity improvements.] Customs has updated the NAFTA CO Form 434, now with the date "11/14." The new form has some nice automated features to select dates. It is not immediately obvious, but when you click the field, you will see a drop down for a calendar. This should eliminate ambiguity as to dating formats (although I note that the printed date will be in U.S. mm/dd/yyyy format). The other innovation is that the contact information for the Exporter, Producer, Importer and signatory all have a space for an email address. This certainly seems like reasonable information for CBP to request. But, it raises the question of whether an importer can rely on a NAFTA CO that does not include an email address and whether CBP will accept it in the event of a verification. Yesterday, CBP issued a notice addressing that question. Below is the full text of what Customs and Border Protection had to say. Note the highlighted middle paragraph stating that forms without the emai...

Harish Shadadpuri, the principal of Trek Leather who the Court of International Trade and Federal Circuit held personally liable for corporate negligence, has asked the Supreme Court to review his case. This is one of the most interesting customs cases in a long time. Shadapuri was initially vindicated  by the Federal Circuit, which then reversed course and unanimously held he was liable as a "person" who "introduced" merchandise to the United States through negligence. This is the last chance for Shadapuri and the last chance for the law to recognize that while corporations may be people, and people are "persons" under the customs penalty law, the corporate people and liable persons are not necessarily the same. In most other cases involving personal liability for corporate acts, the government needs to show that the corporation was nothing more than an alter ego of the person. This is called "piercing the corporate veil" and is usually done und...

I am not talking about pain that does not feel right when performing an exercise but what I am referring to is the emotional and mental pain that will enter each of our lives through differing circumstances.  Whether we are suffering crisis from a family member being ill, a death, divorce, or financial strain due to a job loss, these types of stressful situations can cause us to not take care of ourselves as we place health and fitness on the back burner.  We get so wrapped up in the pain of the event with our minds consumed, our emotional banks drained, and the energy to even put one foot in front of the other feeling like an impossible task. The burden feels heavy and the world can seem bigger than we are.  It will be in these moments where taking care of ourselves through exercise and eating right is even more important, and often times pushing through the pain even when we do not want to will be what keeps us healthy emotionally and physically. It will not be easy and...

Note, this has been updated to add a little more context for those among you who are not trade compliance professionals. Lately, I have been on a slow binge of watching the Walking Dead. Like most TV adaptations of graphic novels and comics, I am finding it very entertaining. I'm only in Season 3, so no one tell me . . . well, anything. As a result, I have been seeing a lot of images of corpses, both animate and inanimate. That reminded me that there is a specific provision in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States ("HTSUS") for the importation of corpses. The HTSUS is the statute (19 USC 1202) by which imported products are assigned rates of duty. It also sets out certain other regulatory requirements and exceptions. General Note 3(e), HTSUS, exempts from customs duties "corpses, together with their coffins and accompanying flowers." When goods arrive at a port in the U.S., they are usually subject to an "entry." That is the process of le...

I'll be speaking at the Georgetown ITU again this year. By "speaking," I mean moderating a panel full of smart people. The topic will be principal use in tariff classification. This is not as mundane as it sounds. Identifying use provisions is getting murkier and evidence of use is not always readily available. The full two-day program features new developments in the area of international trade. Plan to attend Feb. 26-27 at Georgetown Law in Washington DC. Info is here .   

The truth about health and fitness is that we either want it or we don’t.  Let’s face it, we can all come up with reasons not to exercise today or pack our coolers with healthy food to have on hand.  All the reasons in the world are excuses that will eventually catch up to us in the form of illness or injury.  That also is the truth.  What we need to understand is that our lifestyle is our medicine, and that includes what we eat and how we move and rest our bodies.   We can’t continue to walk around in a state of un-health and believe that this is an acceptable existence.  Looking and feeling our best is what we all want, dream about, and talk about, but the action to make it happen never seems to occur.  Look at what is flooding our magazines, commercials, and television shows when it comes to getting healthy.  We need to be living the reality shows of achieving our best body not sitting in front of the tube with our chips watching other peo...

Perfetti, who is the market leader in candy category of the Indian confectionery market ,successfully created a new category of jelly confectionery through the brand Juzt Jelly. Launched in 2012, Juzt Jelly was able to catch the attention of the Indian consumers. The success of Juzt Jelly also prompted ITC to launch the challenging brand Candyman Jellicious. Juzt Jelly is launched as a sub-brand of Alpenliebe. Alpenliebe launched in 1995 has moved from a sugar candy brand to an umbrella brand endorsing wide range of confectionery products ranging from lollipops,eclairs and jelly . Juzt Jelly was launched through celebrity endorsement from the Bollywood actress Kajol. The brand had the tagline " mast jelly " Watch the ad here : Juzt Jelly Launch ad Later the brand moved to animation based campaign themed Jelly ki Duniya meaning The World of Jelly .  Watch the ad here : Juzt Jelly Animation The sugar confectionery category consumers are predominantly kids. Hence the animations...

With this post, I am momentarily caught up. Best Key Textiles Co. Ltd. v. United States has been a bit convoluted from the get go. The company makes, but does not import, metalized polyester yarns. It got a ruling from Customs and Border Protection that classified the yarn in HTSUS item 5605.00.90, which has a rate of duty of 13.2% ad valorem. Armed with this, Best Key got a second ruling on a "pullover garments" called a "Johnny Collar." Best Key's strategy seemed to be to confirm that it was making metalized yarn of 5605.00.90, which has a relatively high rate of duty, and then confirm that apparel made of that yarn would be subject to a relatively lower rate duty applicable to apparel of "other textile materials." Incongruously, Customs classified the Johnny Collar as being of polyester, thereby giving it a higher 32% rate of duty. Best Key requested that Customs review the Johnny Collar classification. In doing so, it also reviewed the yarn classi...

Continuing my effort to catch up with the Court of International Trade and one decision of the Federal Circuit, we now come upon JBLU, Inc. v. US , a recent decision of the Court of International Trade. The issue in this case is whether wearing apparel from China bearing the brand-name "C'est Toi Jeans Los Angeles," "CT Jeans USA," and "C'est Toi Jeans USA" were properly the subject of a Notice to Mark or Redeliver for failure to have adequate country of origin marking. Customs and Border Protection maintains that the use of "Los Angeles" and "USA" on the labels requires the there be in close proximity and in comparable size a a country of origin marking preceded by "Made in," "Product of," or another similar phrase. This requirement comes from 19 CFR 134.46, The importer maintains that section 134.46 does not apply because the geographical designations are part of a trademark or trade name. That argument com...

No one starts at the top and sometimes you can get to the top of your fitness game, and injuries or other issues occur that send you right back to the beginning step.  I speak from experience when it comes to being knocked down from an injury and although the setback was difficult, I never gave up.  When it comes to our exercise programs, we can put so much pressure on ourselves to do too much too soon, and with that come discouragement and frustration.  When we approach our fitness and nutrition programs with a progressive attitude, it is a more realistic way of adopting a healthy lifestyle.  Progressive simply means starting where you are, accepting where you are, doing what you can, mastering what you are able to do, and then moving forward to the next level of whatever type of exercise program you have enlisted yourself.  It also means forgetting any comparisons to others because they are not you, and your program is your program.  The comparison game c...

Usually, I am happy and proud to work with my counterparts at Customs and Border Protection. The good people there tend to do their jobs in an intelligent and professional manner. But then there is HQ H157616 (Sept. 22, 2014). [Update: It appears there is an error in the numbering of this Ruling. My prior link went to a different ruling. Try this one instead .] The facts here are simple. A customs broker filed an entry listing Lifestyle Enterprise Inc. as the importer of record. The subsequent Entry Summary also listed Lifestyle as the IOR and used Lifestyle's importer number. This was an error. Lifestyle was the domestic buyer and was supposed to be the consignee, not the importer. The seller, a company called Starcorp Furniture Inc. was supported to be the importer. The broker had no power of attorney authorizing it to act on behalf of Lifestyle. These facts seem to be undisputed. Also undisputed is that the merchandise involved was wooden bedroom furniture from China. If yo...

Digidesign Inc. v. US  involves a perennial classification question of the digital world. At what point does a digital device that manipulates data and connects to a central processing unit become a unit of an automatic data processing system? This is important as we move toward the era of the " internet of things ." To the extent the connected devices perform a specific function that is not strictly data processing, this case provides an answer. Spoiler: your internet connected refrigerator, toaster, or car is not an ADP machine. In this case, the merchandise was two music editing systems. The decision provides a detailed description of both devices and how they work. For our purposes, just understand that they are physical consoles that translate the sound engineer's manipulation of switches, sliders, and knobs into digital effects. One unit accomplished that task by sending signals to a separate computer where the digital music file is housed. The other unit can do it ...

Ford Motor Company had 17 drawback claims that it believes liquidated by operation of law and, as a result, that U.S. Customs and Border Protection should pay to it. Customs, as you might imagine, disagreed. That is why the U.S. Court of International Trade had to decide Ford Motor Company v. U.S. The nub of the issue is 19 U.S.C. § 1504(a)(2)(C), which states: An entry or claim for drawback filed before December 3, 2004, the liquidation of which is not final as of December 3, 2004, shall be deemed liquidated on the date that is 1 year after December 3, 2004 [ i.e. , on December 3, 2005], at the drawback amount asserted by the claimant at the time of the [drawback] entry or claim.   Ford's claims were filed prior to December 3, 2004 and not liquidated by December 3, 2005. As a result, Ford believes it is entitled to the drawback claim in full. Customs, on the other hand, believes that because the drawback claims involved underlying entries that had not yet liquidated, the claims we...