CBP Webinar for Advisory Committee on Commercial Ops on Oct 7th

The CBP Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations has a meeting on October 7th, 2014, which is free for the public and may be attended via webinar (if you can get the links to work – we cannot). This was announced in the Federal Register. The topics include a variety of presentations with review and discussion pertaining to aspects of  which should be of interest to the importing public, such as:

  1. Review of 2014 Trade Efficiency SurveyCBP COAC Webinar
  2. Sub-workgroups on exports and export licensing
  3. 1USG – or the “One U.S. Government at the Border” efforts, including findings and recommendations by the FDA
  4. Voluntary prior disclosure of IPR infringment violations, AD/CVD and eBond discussions
  5. C-TPAT Export and Trusted Trader Programs
  6. ACE and role of Customs Brokers
  7. Beyond the Border activities with Canada and 21st Century activities with Mexico

Most interesting for me will be #4 and the voluntary prior disclosure of IPR violations, which has been discussed before (agenda here). I hope to hear some concrete proposals on who, what, when and why. You can bet that if customs creates a regulatory system for voluntary prior disclosure of intellectual property rights infringement, importers will be encouraged to undertake a review of their past practices because customs will, with little doubt, dramatically increase enforcement to give the program a kick-start.

Registration can be done as follows (excepted from the Federal Register):

For members of the public who plan to participate via webinar, please register online at https://apps.cbp.gov/tereg/index.asp?w=29 by 5:00 p.m. EST on October 3, 2014. Feel free to share this information with other interested members of your organization or association. Members of the public who are pre-registered and later require cancellation, please do so in advance of the meeting by accessing one (1) of the following links: https://apps.cbp.gov/tereg/cancel.asp?w=28 to cancel an in person registration, or https://apps.cbp.gov/tereg/cancel.asp?w=29 to cancel a webinar registration.

For members of the public who plan to attend the meeting in person, please register either online at https://apps.cbp.gov/tereg/index.asp?w=28; by email to tradeevents@dhs.gov; or by fax to 202-325- 4290 by 5:00 p.m. EST on October 1, 2014. You must register prior to the meeting in order to attend the meeting in person. Please refer to the ADDRESSES section below for more details.

As I said, the links have never worked for me, but if you need help registering here is the contact person:

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Ms. Wanda Tate, Office of Trade Relations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Room 3.5A, Washington, DC 20229; telephone 202-344-1440; facsimile 202-325-4290.

Hope to see you at the webinar!