U.S. Dist. Judge John Coughenour, Seattle, issued a temporary restraining order late last week to stop the import and sale of cheaply designed game systems containing pirated copies of Donkey Kong and many other Nintendo games. Calling it “the largest piracy problem” that it has faced in the U.S., Nintendo of America (NOA) said it believed the piracy operation had cost it “millions of dollars.”

(The ITA notes that Richelain Farms was not selected for individual examination during the CV duty investigation and requested that the ITA conduct an expedited review of the CV duty order on hard red spring wheat from Canada.)

For the 2nd consecutive week, the PS2 version of Activision’s Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 was the top-rented videogame in the U.S. It was the game’s 3rd week in stores. Rentrak said its preliminary Home Video Essentials data for the week ended Oct. 24 showed that the title earned an additional $410,634 on PS2, for $1.23 million to date. The Xbox version of the game was #8 again, earning an additional $205,434 in the week, for $622,030 to date. Activision had one other title in the top 10: X-Men: Legends for PS2 at #7 again in its 5th week ($232,491 in the week, $1.07 million to date). Midway Games, LucasArts Entertainment and Electronic Arts (EA) each had 2 SKUs in the top 10. Midway’s were Mortal Kombat: Deception for PS2 at #2 again in its 3rd week ($373,311 in the week, $1.12 million to date) and the Xbox version at #6 again ($265,158 and $770,827). LucasArts’ Star Wars: Battlefront for PS2 was #3 again in its 5th week ($295,582 and $1.83 million) while the Xbox version was #10 (down one, $201,571 and $1.26 million). EA’s Madden NFL 2005 for PS2 was #4 (up one in its 11th week, $283,727 and $4.19 million) and its Def Jam: Fight for N.Y. on PS2 was #5 (down one in its 5th week, $269,757 and $1.6 million). Microsoft’s Xbox game Fable was #9 (up one in its 6th week, $202,021 and $1.34 million).

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued a preliminary negative antidumping (AD) duty determination on bottle-grade polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resin from Taiwan as the preliminary dumping rates for Far Eastern Textile Ltd. (Far Eastern) and "all others" firms are both 0.09%, which is de minimis.

Fox’s disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow was the top-rented DVD in the U.S. for the 2nd consecutive week, Rentrak said its preliminary Home Video Essentials data for the week ending Oct. 24 showed. Rentrak said the title earned an additional $8.58 million on DVD in the week, for $18.75 million to date. The movie earned a combined $23.49 million in DVD and VHS rentals to date. In its first full week available, Universal’s horror action film Van Helsing was the #2-rented DVD, earning $6.88 million, for $6.98 million to date. Other new DVDs in the top 10 were Fox’s Garfield: The Movie at #3 ($5.58 million in the week, $5.63 million to date) and Warner’s A Cinderella Story at #4 ($4.12 million and $4.16 million).

The ITA states that in response to petitions from respondents, it is postponing its final AD duty determinations for subject merchandise from India, Indonesia, and Thailand until no later than 135 days after October 28, 2004.

Nortel further postponed filing its financial statements for 2003 and the first and 2nd quarters of 2004, and said it now expected to file in mid Nov. “I was not satisfied given the enormous details and complexity involved that we would be able to meet our October deadline,” said Nortel CEO Bill Owens. Nortel said because of the delay, it now expected to miss its Nov. deadline for filing financial statements for the 3rd quarter with the U.S. SEC. It said it planned to announce limited preliminary unaudited financial results for the 3rd quarter by the end of Nov. and to file the financial statements for that quarter mid-Dec.

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued its preliminary results of the antidumping (AD) duty changed circumstances review of polychloroprene rubber from Japan to determine whether Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) is the successor-in-interest company to the joint venture of Showa DDE Manufacturing K.K. (SDEM) and DDE Japan Kabushiki Kaisha (DDE Japan) (collectively, the SDEM/DDE Japan joint venture).

The International Trade Administration (ITA) frequently issues notices on antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duty orders which Broker Power considers to be "minor" in importance as they concern actions that occur after an order is issued and neither announce nor cause any changes to an order's duty rates, scope, affected firms, or effective period.

On October 21, 2004, the International Trade Commission (ITC) issued a news release on its preliminary negative antidumping (AD) injury determination stating that there is no reasonable indication that a U.S. industry is materially injured or threatened with material injury by reason of imports of polyvinyl alcohol from Taiwan.