Concern over US shutdown impact on ITC
Lawyers have expressed concerns that the US government shutdown, which began on October 1, may cause significant delays at the International Trade Commission (ITC).
US politicians have failed to agree on the federal budget, meaning many government agencies are closed and employees are off work unpaid until the deadlock breaks.
The ITC is one of the affected agencies; all its cases have been tolled (postponed) and services on its websites are unavailable.
An ITC statement says all schedules and deadlines will be postponed for the same amount of time as the deadlock lasts, and operations will resume immediately after the shutdown ends.
Deadlines at the ITC are typically very tight, but lawyers are worried that they will be not met if the shutdown continues.
“Often cases resolve within 16 months, after a trial about nine months into the case,” said Rodney Sweetland, partner at Duane Morris LLP.
“Because of that, there are deadlines that all fall on each other. If there is a delay at one stage, it has a cascading effect later on.
“For every week we are down, it will take a few weeks to put this back together,” he said. “If the delay lasts for 18 days, you can’t expect to add on 18 days and expect it to work out. When you interrupt the schedule, judges lives will be miserable.”
Bob Kenney, partner at Birch, Stewart, Kolasch & Birch LLP, added: “If the shutdown lasts weeks, it becomes more difficult to recoup these dates.”
The backlogs will be manageable, however, said Rory Radding, partner at Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP, but he said the current delays are “screwing up everybody’s personal scheduling issues”.
Kenney agreed, adding: “Often, parties are coordinating witnesses, discovery and trial dates, and if you’re litigating you have other dates in court.
“It throws a lot of people’s strategies into a sense of confusion.”
Sweetland said the delays could lead to the loss of expert witnesses, cause lawyers to become unavailable and have “case determinative effects”.
He added: “The ITC will cope – it’s just how to sort out and what the long term effects are.”
While the ITC and the Federal Trade Commission are closed for business, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the federal courts (and the Supreme Court) are still open.
Out of the USPTO and the courts, Kenney said, the USPTO is most likely to stay open longest as it “does pretty well at making money and can run off reserves for longer.
“Court filing fees are not enough for courts to run,” he said.
