Study On Section 337 Of American Trade Law

Section 337 traces back to 1922 Tariff Act. It has now been the special article which applies mainly to the foreign business companies recognized as conducting intellectual property rights infringement. The main content includes: If ITC recognizes that the imported goods infringe the intellectual property rights of the the USA, it may issue exclusion orders which will prevent the importation of the Goods. Section 337 is very powerful. And china, as a new rising industrial country, suffers more and more from the 337 investigation. This dissertation tries to discuss about Section 337generally, and wishes to help China's companies know about and response to Section 337.Besides the preface and the conclusion, this dissertation is composed of the following four chapters:Chapter 1 introduces the history, theoretic foundation of Section 337. It first summarizes the three important phase of development of Section 337. In subchapter 2 we discuss the legal characters, legal status and legal functions of Section 337.Chapter 2 discusses the substantiality contents and procedural rules of Section 337. We first generally introduce Section 337, and then it's substantiality contents. In subchapter 3 we analyze its procedural rules.Chapter 3 discusses the relationship between Section 337 and the WTO. We first analyze the relationship between Section 337 and GATT1947, then the relationship between Section 337 and GATT1994. At the end of this Chapter, we analyze the consistency of Section 337 and TRIPS.Chapter 4 probes into the practices of Section 337 and China's countermeasures. We first introduce its practices, then, we analyze its influence to our foreign trade and the reasons. And in the last subchapter we give some advice on how to response to Section 337.