ITC Issues Summary of 4 APO Breach Investigations in 2024
The International Trade Commission on Dec. 23 published a summary of administrative protective order (APO) breach investigations related to proceedings under title VII and section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 conducted during fiscal year 2024. The commission said that, over time, it has added to its report of breaches in proceedings other than title VII and violations of the ITC's rules, including the rule on bracketing business proprietary information.
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The ITC said the summary is to "inform representatives of parties to Commission proceedings of the specific types of APO breaches before the Commission and the corresponding types of actions that the Commission has taken."
The summary detailed four cases that were investigated by the commission in 2024. The first case saw the ITC find that two attorneys from different law firms who collaborated on a brief filed at the Court of International Trade related to a title VII investigation each breached the APO by "publicly filing a brief that contained unredacted" business proprietary information. The APO was then breached a second time by one of the attorneys when the attorney failed to completely redact the proprietary information from the corrected form of the brief.
The second case involved three individuals in a title VII investigation who breached the APO "when they publicly filed and served to unauthorized parties a public version of a brief that contained unredacted" proprietary information. The third case found that a law firm breached the APO in a section 337 investigation when it served its clients a public version of a document that had another party's proprietary information.
In the fourth case, the ITC said an "economic consultant breached the APO in a title VII investigation by making BPI available to unauthorized parties on three separate occasions."