CBP Says U.S. Country of Origin for AvePoint's SharePoint Software

CBP ruled on Dec. 4 that the U.S. is the country of origin of AvePoint’s DocAve Software for government procurement “buy American” purposes. The software, which is a suite of applications for Microsoft Sharepoint, is developed in the U.S. and China. Programming is broken up into modules that are mostly created in China. But the majority of development work and the “software build” (the combination of the modules into a finished, usable product) occurs in the United States. CBP said that software build is a substantial transformation because the previously unusable modules become an executable, installable program. Furthermore, 68% of the total hours of work spent creating the software were performed in the U.S., and only 32% in China.