U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reposted its guide on how businesses and rights owners can partner with CBP to increase enforcement and protection of their intellectual property rights at the border. This guide, which contains no changes from when it was issued in 2011, provides information on enforcement, recording intellectual property with CBP via e-Recordation, use of e-Allegations to submit allegations of infringing shipments or conduct to CBP, information sharing, and contacting CBP. CBP has also separately posted a contact information sheet for reporting IPR violations, consulting a CBP IPR attorney, or obtaining guidance on CBP's IPR policy and programs. IPR guide is available here. Contact sheet for IPR resources is available here.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection for Field Operations at the Port of New York/Newark has issued an Informational Pipeline to provide instructions to the importing community on how to obtain relief through the administrative refund process at the time of request for the deletion/cancellation of an entry. According to the Pipeline, PEAs will not be accepted for this process.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have issued the following news releases related to commercial trade and related issues:

A listing of recent antidumping and countervailing duty messages posted to U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Web site as of January 25, 2012, along with the case number(s) and CBP message number, is provided below. These messages are available by searching on the listed CBP message number at http://addcvd.cbp.gov.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted documents on changes to the Customs and Trade Interface Requirements (CATAIR) Appendix T, which provides codes and qualifiers for the PGA Message Set. Changes include the addition of new codes for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), added a code for FDA Clinical Investigator, reduced category type codes to comply with World Customs Organization guidelines for certain code lengths, etc. CBP also recently posted the change record for the CATAIR chapter on the PGA Message Set.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a notice containing the email address the trade can use for submitting questions on ACE Simplified Entry and Summary. General questions can be sent to: CBPSimplifiedProcesses@dhs.gov.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a notice containing the trade contact information for the Pharmaceuticals and Electronics Centers for Excellence and Expertise, which have been renamed the "Industry Integration Center for Pharmaceuticals, Health & Chemicals CEE" and the "Information Technology and Consumer Electronics CEE" to show an upcoming expansion of their product scope.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has submitted a final rule to the Office of Management and Budget that would amend 19 CFR to provide that where an owner or master of a vessel documented under the laws of the United States fails to pay, within 30 days of CBP issuing the bill, the duties determined to be due that are associated with the purchase of equipment for, or repair to, the vessel while it is outside the United States, interest will accrue on the amounts owed to CBP and that person will be liable for interest.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a CSMS message announcing the issuance of Harmonized System Update 1201 on changes to the 2012 Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS). This update contains 9,350 ABI records and 2,155 harmonized tariff records.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection states it is aware that ABI filers began having issues with release dates beginning with a code deployment on the evening of January 17, 2012, when the M1 team switched the manifest system of record from AMS to ACE. This change in the system of record resulted in some issues with cargo release dates, which are in the process of being fixed. CBP states its Field Offices will be notified not to issue liquidated damages created by these systems issues.