On April 19, 2013, the U.S. International Trade Commission (“Commission”) published final Rules of General Application and Adjudication and Enforcement (78 Fed. Reg. 23474-82), which become effective on May 20, 2013. The final rules amend the Commission’s Rules of Practice and Procedure 19 C.F.R. Part 201 - Rules of General Application and 19 C.F.R. Part 210 - Adjudication and Enforcement. Many of the final rules are identical to the correspondingly numbered proposed rules published by the Commission on July 12, 2012 (77 Fed. Reg. 41120- 32). However, the final rules differ from the proposed rules for nine of the rules (for a total of 16 changes from the proposed rules) after the Commission considered the public comments on the proposed rules amendments. The Commission received a total of 8 sets of comments, including from the American Bar Association, Section of Intellectual Property Law; the American Intellectual Property Lawyers Association; Broadcom; Cisco; Innovation Alliance; the Intellectual Property Owners Association; and the ITC Trial Lawyers Association. A detailed summary of the amendments to 19 C.F.R. Parts 201 and 210 follows. (This summary is not intended to be inclusive of all amendments set forth in the final rules.)

PART 201 - RULES OF GENERAL APPLICATION -

Subpart B - Initiation and Conduct of Investigations -

Section 201.16 Service of process and other documents.

The Commission uses the term “express delivery” instead of “overnight delivery” in certain instances and adds a definition in paragraph (e) for “Service by express delivery” to mean “a method that would provide delivery by the next business day within the United States and refers to the equivalent express delivery service when the delivery is to a foreign location.”