CBP Tells DC Court Emails With Apple Don't Establish It Helped Apple Skirt Import Ban
CBP told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Sept. 22 that communications between it and Apple didn't show that the agency coordinated with Apple to skirt a limited exclusion order (LEO) from the International Trade Commission that bars the importation of Apple Watch products that infringe Masimo's patents (Masimo v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, D.D.C. # 25-02749).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
The brief came from Masimo's case against CBP, which alleged the agency let Apple bypass the exclusion order in an August 2025 ruling via an "ex parte process." Earlier this month, Masimo filed a notice of document production, drawing the federal D.C. court's attention to communications provided by the government, which Masimo said "directly contradict representations made to the Court" by CBP "and confirm" the D.C. court's jurisdiction over the case.
Masimo said the emails between Apple and CBP show that the two parties "made a considered judgment not to use the “standard certification language” to accompany Apple’s shipment, "which would have required Apple to certify that it did not believe the articles it sought to import were excluded from entry under the LEO and to supply a reason why." Masimo said that, instead, CBP coordinated with Apple to "engineer a challenge" to CBP's January 2025 ruling "with Apple shipping in products that both CBP and Apple understood to be prohibited by that ruling."
In response, CBP said Masimo "completely elides the purpose" of its communications with Apple, which was "Apple’s intent to import its redesigned watch to set up a decision from" CBP "as to whether the watches would be excluded from the United States when they reached the border." Apple's other shipments would contain many types of Apple products, so the purpose of the emails between CBP and Apple was "solely to distinguish a single shipment of the redesigned watches, separate from all other products."
Both of the individuals responsible for sending the emails "confirmed that CBP was not involved in Apple’s decision to import a shipment of redesigned watches that ultimately resulted in CBP’s August 2025 ruling, and that CBP did not tell Apple in advance how it would treat the shipment," the brief said.
The emails show "nothing more than the administrative logistics of the shipment leading to the August 2025 ruling," the brief said. In the emails, CBP asked Apple to provide "clarity on its intentions for the test shipment in the form of a certification." While Masimo said, "without support," that the certification was a departure from the "standard certification language," the government said "Masimo misunderstands the purpose of certifications provided for with respect to Section 337 exclusion orders."
There's nothing in the communications "that supports Masimo’s hinted allegation of outside influence," the brief said, noting that the emails aren't "ex parte" communications, since "the matter was not in litigation, and the emails reflect nothing more than an importer sharing its importation logistics with CBP, which are routinely treated as business confidential information."