Pursuant to the initiation notice of an AD duty new shipper review, a bond or other security may continue to be posted in lieu of an AD cash deposit, until the final results are in effect.

According to the ITA, the petitioner, International Imaging Materials, Inc. (IIMAK), alleged that respondents in the three concurrent investigations of TTR (France, Japan, and South Korea) would attempt to circumvent the order by slitting jumbo rolls in third countries. Therefore, the ITA states that IIMAK requested that slitting does not change the country of origin of TTR for AD duty purposes.

(a) These companies as both exporter and producer have de minimis CV rates (Boccam: 0.41% and Sechoirs: 0.60%) and are excluded from the CV duty order.

(a) Companies other than the 14 listed above, will either be subject to an earlier final results of a CV duty review or the "all others" rate established in the original CV duty investigation. The ITA notes that the "all others" rate is expected to change in a future final results of a CV duty expedited reviews. (See ITT's Online Archives or 11/13/02, 05/14/03, 05/22/02 and 02/04/04 news, 02111345, 03051430, 02052217 and 04020435 for BP summaries of the final results of CV duty expedited and new shipper reviews for other companies, and the CV duty order for softwood lumber from Canada.)

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued a notice stating that it is postponing until May 13, 2004 (from March 23, 2004) its preliminary antidumping (AD) duty determination on certain aluminum plate from South Africa.

An item on how to fix public safety interference at 800 MHz began to circulate on the 8th floor at the FCC, according to a research note by Legg Mason and other sources late Tues. Various proposals have been lined up before the agency on how to mitigate public safety interference in this spectrum, including a consensus plan backed by Nextel and others that would entail spectrum reconfigurations at 700, 800 and 900 MHz and 1.9 GHz. “Our understanding is that at least 4 of the 5 offices have, as a preliminary matter, accepted the need to make the 1.9 GHz spectrum available to Nextel, but at a price,” Legg Mason said in a research note. “We do not know whether the draft order actually includes a dollar amount for what the Commission seeks from Nextel to compensate for the greater value of the spectrum it will receive.”

Test marketing has concluded for the DualDisc hybrid DVD/CD, but 5 weeks after it began questions remain about patent claims to hybrid technology -- as well as playability issues for the flipper discs. Another lab report we've seen indicates potential problems with the DualDisc’s CD side. And legal documents we've seen indicate that DualDisc backer Warner Music Group (WMG) had a binding agreement dating to 2000 to use the “DVD [plus]” technology patented by DVD Plus International for any hybrid discs the music company marketed in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has preliminarily determined to revoke the antidumping (AD) duty order on extruded rubber thread from Malaysia for all entries with a time of entry on or after October 1, 2003, the first day of the most recent period of administrative review and the only period for which an administrative review has not been completed.

Recently published test results by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) indicate that so-called “grandfathered” ground penetrating radar (GPRs) devices caused “severe interference” in some cases to Air Traffic Control receivers. In 2002, the FCC’s Office of Engineering & Technology laid out a waiver procedure for certain ultra-wideband devices, allowing existing GPRs and wall-imaging devices to continue to operate. Eligible users could keep operating those devices under Part 15 rules if they were purchased before July 15, 2002, and there continued to be no evidence of harmful interference. The FAA Technical Center in Atlantic City, at the request of the agency’s Office of Spectrum Policy & Management, conducted tests with such grandfathered GPR devices. Last year, the FAA said preliminary results pointed to very severe interference to airborne helicopters at a distance of 100 ft. from a GPR device. At the time, GPR proponents said those initial results appeared out of sync with how these devices actually operate because GPR emissions are required to be much lower than those from ordinary consumer devices such as laptop PCs (CD Feb 13 p1). The FAA tests were designed to assess the impact of GPR devices on aeronautical systems operating below 960 MHz. The tests showed that a GPR “exceeded the new FCC Part 15 requirements by as much as 12 db, caused severe interference in some scenarios to the FAA’s Air Traffic Control receivers making air to ground communications difficult, if not impossible, and interfered with the audio portion of airborne communications and NAVAIDS radios,” the report said. It recommended that FCC Part 15 regulations be changed to require that UWB testing use smaller spectrum analyzer bandwidths, perhaps in the 10 kHz range. It said that under such a scenario individual spectral lines that may cause interference would be visible on the analyzer. “These spectral lines are invaluable in assisting the FAA in making a determination [about] whether interference will occur,” it said. The FAA report also recommended that the FCC require GPRs to be shielded so emissions “other than those required for proper operation of the equipment” are suppressed. The report said this would direct the GPR signal more towards the ground and “thus lessen the effect on FAA systems.” The report noted that these test results can’t be used on their own to establish GPR interference criteria to aeronautical communications and navigation systems that provide critical safety-of-life systems. “These tests do, however, provide a qualitative demonstration of the potential for GPR devices to interfere with aeronautical systems. Although the GPR unit tested does not meet the requirements of FCC Part 15, it is one of the units waived by the FCC to allow for its operation,” the report said. It noted that because GPR interference mechanisms aren’t yet fully understood, the test results couldn’t be extrapolated to estimate the interference potential of a GPR that doesn’t meet Part 15 requirements. The report said FAA plans further testing of GPRs and other UWB equipment to characterize these interference issues.

A permanent stay on an injunction against the sale of DVD copying software by 321 Studios will be argued March 15 after Judge Richard Owen, U.S. Dist. Court, N.Y.C., issued an oral, temporary stay of the preliminary injunction he granted to studios Fox and Paramount March 3. As with the permanent injunction issued by Judge Susan Illston of U.S. Dist. Court, San Francisco, 321 Studios said it planned to appeal the N.Y.C. ruling. Since the Cal. injunction took effect Feb. 27, 321’s DVD X Copy family of DVD backup programs have been sold without the code that defeats DVD’s Content Scrambling System encryption. Both judges ruled 321 violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition against devices that circumvent copy protection systems.