The Commerce Department released the final results of its countervailing duty administrative review on glycine from India (C-533-884). The agency set new CV duty cash deposit rates for exporters of subject merchandise. These final results will be used to set final assessments of CV duties on importers for subject merchandise entered Sept. 4, 2018, through Dec. 31, 2019.
The Commerce Department published notices in the Federal Register Jan. 13 on the following AD/CV duty proceedings (any notices that announce changes to AD/CV duty rates, scope, affected firms or effective dates will be detailed in another ITT article):
The Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission published the following Federal Register notices Jan. 13 on AD/CV duty proceedings:
LG’s antitrust case alleging Dolby Labs reneged on its ATSC commitments to license AC-4 audio codec patents for NextGenTV on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms (see 2201060058) was reassigned Wednesday to U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty in Manhattan, the 1:22-cv-42 docket report shows (in Pacer). Judge Lewis Kaplan is no longer assigned. Crotty, former corporation counsel to Rudy Giuliani in his first term as New York mayor, was Verizon New York and Connecticut president until President George W. Bush appointed him to the federal bench in 2005. LG seeks a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Dolby to stop conduct that LG alleges will harm its brand, but the conduct is hard to definitively discern because the public version of the complaint and its accompanying documents are redacted. LG and Dolby have worked together for more than 30 years “to create high-quality consumer electronics for use in home entertainment, automobiles and mobile devices,” says one of the complaint's few unredacted passages. Yet LG now seeks a declaratory judgment from the court that it has complied with its AC-4 license agreements “in all material aspects and that Dolby has no basis to terminate” those agreements. Dolby and LG didn't comment by Wednesday.
The Commerce Department will retroactively suspend liquidation and require antidumping duty cash deposits for all exporters of raw honey from Vietnam (A-552-833), it said in a notice. Commerce made a new finding of critical circumstances for all Vietnamese companies, including Ban Me Thuot, DakHoney, the average rate companies and the Vietnam-wide entity. As a result, Commerce will direct CBP to suspend liquidation and require AD duty cash deposits at the applicable rate for any unliquidated entries on or after Aug. 25, 2021 (i.e., 90 days prior to Commerce’s Nov. 23, 2021, preliminary determination).
Oral argument on Florida’s social media law in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will happen the week of April 25, the court said Monday. In case 21-12355, Florida is challenging a lower court’s preliminary injunction stopping enforcement of the law that makes it unlawful for sites to deplatform political candidates and requires sites to be transparent about policing (see 2112210018).
Oral argument on Florida’s social media law in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will happen the week of April 25, the court said Monday. In case 21-12355, Florida is challenging a lower court’s preliminary injunction stopping enforcement of the law that makes it unlawful for sites to deplatform political candidates and requires sites to be transparent about policing (see 2112210018).
U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi in Los Angeles granted Netflix and various studios a preliminary injunction Friday against the anonymous defendant operators of the streaming video website Primewire. In the docket 21-cv-09317 order, Scarsi said the plaintiffs adequately showed a significant likelihood they will succeed on the merits in their video piracy claim. He said defendants hadn't responded.
U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi in Los Angeles granted Netflix and various studios a preliminary injunction Friday against the anonymous defendant operators of the streaming video website Primewire. In the docket 21-cv-09317 order, Scarsi said the plaintiffs adequately showed a significant likelihood they will succeed on the merits in their video piracy claim. He said defendants hadn't responded.
With so many redactions in LG’s memorandum of law in support of a preliminary injunction and a 14-day temporary restraining order against Dolby Labs (see 2201060058), it’s virtually impossible for the public to identify the allegedly harmful Dolby conduct that LG is asking the court to enjoin. Dolby violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and California unfair-competition laws when it reneged on its ATSC commitments to license its Dolby AC-4 audio codec patents for NextGenTV on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms, alleges LG in the memorandum. A sealed complaint, unavailable for public view even in redacted form, was locked in a vault Jan. 4 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, according to the case's 1:22-cv-42 docket report. Once a standards-setting organization (SSO) selects a technology “to perform a function,” as ATSC did when it picked AC-4 as NextGenTV’s codec for North America, “it eliminates the competing technologies in the relevant market,” says LG’s 34-page memorandum. “Equipped with SSO-derived monopoly power,” it says, “Dolby has acted anticompetitively to exploit that power by demanding” actions from LG that are blacked out in the document. When LG “refused to give in to its demands, Dolby exerted maximum pressure,” it says, but the nature and specifics of Dolby’s allegedly bad behavior also are hidden from public view. “That violated Dolby’s FRAND commitment” to ATSC, “which was the only thing protecting competition from Dolby’s monopoly power,” it says. The supply chain crisis adds further urgency to LG’s preliminary injunction and TRO motion, according to the few snippets of readable text in the memorandum. LG “has suffered and will suffer irreparable harm” from Dolby’s actions, it says. “Ensuring consistent, timely, and complete delivery requires an exceptionally delicate balancing act in any situation, but even more so now when the economy is in the throes of historic disruptions,” it says. The “risks” to LG from Dolby’s actions, including the loss of market share and the threat of lost customers, “are exacerbated because of how tight the global supply chain is,” it says. Dolby and LG haven't responded to multiple requests for comment since LG applied to the court Dec. 23 to file its complaint under seal. Dolby filed a declaration statement with ATSC in June 2016 agreeing to license its AC-4 patents on FRAND terms, as ATSC's patent policy requires.