Trade & Manufacturing - News of Note - April 2015

King & Spalding
Contact

United States Imposes New Sanctions Against Certain Venezuelan Officials
Cole Pfeiffer & Elizabeth Owerbach

On March, 8 President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order blocking, or "freezing," the property and interests in property of "certain persons contributing to the situation in Venezuela" and suspending their entry into the United States. The Office of Foreign Assets Control has added these individuals to its list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN List), and U.S. persons are prohibited from transacting with them or with entities in which the blocked parties own, directly or indirectly, at least a 50 percent interest. The Executive Order implements the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014, which King & Spalding's Trade & Manufacturing Alert reported on in February. The President has determined that the Government of Venezuela, and specifically certain individuals, are responsible for acts such as the "erosion of human rights guarantees" and "curtailment of press freedoms." Seven individuals have been targeted, all of whom were or are Venezuelan senior officials and leaders of entities that have engaged in human rights abuses as outlined in the EO. The current sanctions address only these seven people and do not, the Administration has clarified, target the Venezuelan people or economy.

Customs and Border Protection Issues Update on Enforcement of Trade Orders
P. Lee Smith

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released its third AD/CVD Update at the end of February 2015. As explained in the January 2015 edition of King & Spalding's Trade & Manufacturing Alert, the AD/CVD Update is part of CBP's outreach efforts and a way to publicize CBP's progress on this Priority Trade Issue. Similar to past AD/CVD Updates, the February 2015 publication highlighted select enforcement activities conducted by CBP. In particular, CBP highlighted its efforts to enforce the antidumping duty order on honey from China. In discussing its efforts regarding honey, CBP advised that "Special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and CBP officers have stepped up efforts regarding commercial fraud investigations that focus on U.S. economic and health and safety interests." CBP also stated that it currently has 108 audits related to antidumping and countervailing duties in progress.

Intellectual Property Violators Find Notoriety
Szymon Maziakowski & Taryn Koball Williams

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative last month released its fifth annual Notorious Markets List, a publication of select online and physical marketplaces that facilitate intellectual property violations.

The list identifies physical venues, such as the largest shopping market in Rio de Janeiro and a complex of seven-story buildings in Shanghai selling wholesale goods, as well as a number of online sites that engage in intellectual property rights infringement. For the first time, this year's report included internet domain registrars, which manage Web addresses for a fee and may facilitate online counterfeiting or piracy on sites using their domains. Examples include online pharmacies selling goods labeled with counterfeit trademarks as well as online file sharing services facilitating the illegal distribution of media protected by copyright law. Other notable venues are not on the list, such as Alibaba Group's Taobao.com, which received a number of complaints from copyright holders about counterfeit products, according to a Chinese government report. The Taobao marketplace was removed from the list in 2012 after taking anti-counterfeit measures, and its parent company now has a prominent presence in mainstream U.S. capital markets after its record-breaking initial public offering in 2014.

While many of the countries hosting the markets in the List are accused of intellectual property violations in other major studies, a number of online marketplaces are based in countries that have established intellectual property protections and are therefore not usually seen as offenders, such as Spain, Sweden, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

While identifying notorious intellectual property offenders has proven effective for private and public entities to encourage reform by highlighted offenders, the list has no legal bearing. A broader analysis of intellectual property protection and enforcement in particular countries and economies is presented in the U.S. Trade Representative's annual Special 301 Report (see coverage in the June 2014 and February 2015 issues of the TMA).

DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

© King & Spalding | Attorney Advertising

Written by:

King & Spalding
Contact
more
less

King & Spalding on:

Reporters on Deadline

"My best business intelligence, in one easy email…"

Your first step to building a free, personalized, morning email brief covering pertinent authors and topics on JD Supra:
*By using the service, you signify your acceptance of JD Supra's Privacy Policy.
Custom Email Digest
- hide
- hide