On November 18th the International Trade Commission’s (ITC) recent publication, Notice of Final Rulemaking will come into effect.  The publication includes amendments to the original document created specifically to gain more information from filed public issue complaints with the ITC.

According the document’s initial summary report, these amendments were created to help the ITC identify investigations which call for “further development of public interest issues in the record, and to identify and develop information regarding the public interest at each stage of the investigation.”

Some of the amendments found in the seven page document include the following points:

• A separate statement must be made by the complainant to address the public interest at the time of filing.
• The accused person must address the issue at the time of the response.
• Public comments must be provided prior to the origin of a complaint.

The notice of final rules for gathering information on public interest issues, originally published mid-October, is expected to bring a great number of complaint filings over the next week.