TianRui Group Co. v. International Trade Commission

Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge BRYSON. Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge MOORE.

This appeal arises from a determination by the International Trade Commission *1324that the importation of certain cast steel railway wheels violated section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, 19 U.S.C. § 1337. The Commission found that the wheels were manufactured using a process that was developed in the United States, protected under domestic trade secret law, and misappropriated abroad. We are asked to decide whether the Commission’s statutory authority over “[ujnfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation of articles ... into the United States,” as provided by section 337(a)(1)(A), allows the Commission to look to conduct occurring in China in the course of a trade secret misappropriation investigation. We conclude that the Commission has authority to investigate and grant relief based in part on extraterritorial conduct insofar as it is necessary to protect domestic industries from injuries arising out of unfair competition in the domestic marketplace.

We are also asked to decide whether the Commission erred by finding that the imported wheels would injure a domestic industry when no domestic manufacturer is currently practicing the protected process. In light of the evidence before the Commission regarding the marketplace for cast steel railway wheels, we affirm the Commission’s determination that the wheel imports threaten to destroy or substantially injure an industry in the United States, in violation of section 337.

I

A

Amsted Industries Inc. is a domestic manufacturer of cast steel railway wheels. It owns two secret processes for manufacturing such wheels, the “ABC process” and the “Griffin process.” Amsted previously practiced the ABC process at its foundry in Calera, Alabama, but it no longer uses that process in the United States. Instead, Amsted uses the Griffin process at three of its domestic foundries. Amsted has licensed the ABC process to several firms with foundries in China.

TianRui Group Company Limited and TianRui Group Foundry Company Limited (collectively, “TianRui”) manufacture cast steel railway wheels in China. In 2005, TianRui sought to license Amsted’s wheel manufacturing technology, but the parties could not agree on the terms of a license. After the failed negotiations, TianRui hired nine employees away from one of Amsted’s Chinese licensees, Datong ABC Castings Company Limited. Some of those employees had been trained in the ABC process at the Calera plant in Alabama, and others had received training in that process at the Datong foundry in China.

Datong had previously notified those employees through a written employee code of conduct that information pertaining to the ABC process was proprietary and confidential. Each employee had been advised that he had a duty not to disclose confidential information. Eight of the nine employees had also signed confidentiality agreements before leaving Datong to begin working for TianRui. In the proceedings brought by Amsted before the International Trade Commission, Amsted alleged that the former Datong employees disclosed information and documents to TianRui that revealed the details of the ABC process and thereby misappropriated Amsted’s trade secrets.

TianRui partnered with Standard Car Truck Company, Inc., (“SCT”) to form the joint venture Barber TianRui Railway Supply, LLC. SCT and Barber have marketed TianRui wheels to United States customers and have imported TianRui wheels into the United States. Other than Amsted, SCT and Barber are the only *1325companies selling or attempting to sell cast steel railway wheels in the United States.

B

Amsted filed a complaint with the Commission alleging a violation of section 337 based on TianRui’s misappropriation of trade secrets. Section 337(a)(1)(A) prohibits “[u]nfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation of articles ... into the United States, ... the threat or effect of which is ... to destroy or substantially injure an industry in the United States.”

TianRui moved to terminate the proceedings on the ground that the alleged misappropriation occurred in China and that Congress did not intend for section 337 to be applied extraterritorially. An administrative law judge at the Commission denied that motion based on his view that section 337 focuses not on where the misappropriation occurs but rather on the nexus between the imported articles and the unfair methods of competition. The administrative law judge also rejected TianRui’s argument that Chinese courts would provide a better forum for Amsted’s complaint.

At the merits stage, the administrative law judge analyzed the alleged misappropriation under Illinois trade secret law. After noting that the Commission has looked to general principles of tort or commercial law in past investigations involving trade secret misappropriation, the administrative law judge cited this court’s statement in Leggett & Platt, Inc. v. Hickory Springs Manufactuñng Co., 285 F.3d 1353, 1360 (Fed.Cir.2002), that “[tjrade secret misappropriation is a matter of state law,” as the basis for applying state law to this section 337 investigation. He applied Illinois law because Amsted, SCT, and Barber all have their principal place of business in Illinois. He noted, however, that “the Illinois law relating to trade secrets does not differ substantially from the law applied in previous Commission trade secret investigations,” and he then applied general principles of trade secret law, including the six factors defining a trade secret set forth in the comments to section 757 of the Restatement (First) of Torts.

Following a 10-day evidentiary hearing, the administrative law judge found that TianRui had misappropriated 128 trade secrets relating to the ABC process from Datong. That conclusion was based on evidence that included an admission by TianRui’s expert that TianRui’s foundry used the asserted trade secrets; his only contention was that the trade secrets were not actually secret. In addition, the administrative law judge compared TianRui’s manufacturing specifications with secret Datong documents outlining the ABC process and found them essentially identical. In fact, some of the TianRui specifications contained the same typographical errors that were found in the Datong documents. The administrative law judge also relied on similarities in foundry layout between the Datong and TianRui plants. The administrative law judge summarized the evidence as to the appropriation of the trade secrets by saying that “there is overwhelming direct and circumstantial evidence that Tian-Rui obtained its manufacturing process for cast steel railway wheelfs] through the misappropriation of [Amsted’s] ABC Trade Secrets.”

Besides contesting the Commission’s authority to apply section 337 extraterritorially, TianRui contended that Amsted did not satisfy the domestic industry requirement of section 337 based on the fact that Amsted no longer practiced the ABC process in the United States. Because none of Amsted’s domestic operations used the ABC process, TianRui argued that there was no “domestic industry” that could be *1326injured by the misappropriation of trade secrets relating to that process.

The administrative law judge rejected that argument, holding that it was not essential that the domestic industry use the proprietary process, as long as the misappropriation of that process caused injury to the complainant’s domestic industry. Applying that standard, the administrative law judge concluded that Amsted’s domestic industry would be substantially injured by the importation of TianRui wheels.

The Commission decided not to review the administrative law judge’s initial determination and issued a limited exclusion order. TianRui then appealed to this court.

II

The main issue in this case is whether section 337 authorizes the Commission to apply domestic trade secret law to conduct that occurs in part in a foreign country.

Section 337 authorizes the Commission to exclude articles from entry into the United States when it has found “[ujnfair methods of competition [or] unfair acts in the importation of [those] articles.” 19 U.S.C. § 1337(a)(1)(A). The Commission has long interpreted section 337 to apply to trade secret misappropriation. See, e.g., Certain Nut Jewelry and Parts Thereof, Inv. No. 337-TA-229, USITC Pub. 1929 (Nov.1986); Certain Processes for the Manufacture of Skinless Sausage Casings and Resulting Products, Inv. No. 337-TA-148/169, USITC Pub. 1624 (Dec.1984) (“Sausage Casings ”); Certain Apparatus for the Continuous Production of Copper Rod, Inv. No. 337-TA-52, USITC Pub. 1017, 1979 WL 33484 (Nov. 1979). TianRui does not challenge that interpretation. Nor does it dispute the Commission’s factual finding that proprietary information belonging to Amsted was disclosed to TianRui in breach of obligations of confidentiality imposed on the former Datong employees or the finding that the information was used in manufacturing the imported railway wheels. Instead, TianRui focuses on the fact that the disclosure of the trade secret information occurred in China. According to TianRui, section 337 cannot apply to extraterritorial conduct and therefore does not reach trade secret misappropriation that occurs outside the United States.

Amsted argues that the Commission did not apply section 337 extraterritorially, because trade secrets were misappropriated in the United States as a legal matter when railway wheels made by exploiting those trade secrets were imported into the United States and sold to customers or disclosed to the Association of American Railroads for certification purposes. Amsted argues that Illinois law defines trade secret misappropriation very broadly and that under Illinois law any unauthorized “use” of an article embodying a trade secret constitutes misappropriation. That definition of misappropriation, according to Amsted, is broad enough to encompass any use of articles produced by the misappropriated process, not simply the acts that constitute a direct breach of the duty of confidentiality. Amsted concludes that the administrative law judge therefore had sufficient evidence to find trade secret misappropriation based on TianRui’s importation of the wheels and its disclosure of those wheels for certification purposes.

Like Amsted, the Commission argues that it applied section 337 based on Tian-Rui’s conduct in the United States and did not apply the statute extraterritorially to conduct occurring in China. In the alternative, the Commission contends that section 337 applies to imported articles pro*1327duced with misappropriated trade secrets, even if the disclosure of the proprietary information occurred outside the United States.

A

At the outset, we reject Amsted’s argument that Illinois trade secret law governs the section 337 inquiry in this case. The question of what law applies in a section 337 proceeding involving trade secrets is a matter of first impression for this court. We hold that a single federal standard, rather than the law of a particular state, should determine what constitutes a misappropriation of trade secrets sufficient to establish an “unfair method of competition” under section 337.

The administrative law judge acknowledged that in previous section 337 proceedings involving trade secret misappropriation, the Commission has applied general principles of trade secret law, not the law of any particular state. The administrative judge, however, felt bound to apply state law because of a statement by this court that issues of trade secret misappropriation are ordinarily matters of state law. See Leggett & Platt, 285 F.3d at 1360. That statement is, of course, true as a general matter and was true of the trade secret issue in the Leggett & Platt case, which addressed state law trade secret claims that were before this court under supplemental jurisdiction. But where the question is whether particular conduct constitutes “unfair methods of competition” and “unfair acts” in importation, in violation of section 337, the issue is one of federal law and should be decided under a uniform federal standard, rather than by reference to a particular state’s tort law.

The question under section 337 is not whether the policy choices of a particular state’s legislature or those reflected in a particular state’s common law rules should be vindicated, but whether goods imported from abroad should be excluded because of a violation of the congressional policy of protecting domestic industries from unfair competition, which is a distinctly federal concern as to which Congress has created a federal remedy. In light of the fact that section 337 deals with international commerce, a field of special federal concern, the case for applying a federal rule of decision is particularly strong. In fact, the nonstatutory unfair competition provision of section 337 falls comfortably into both of the categories that have been described as calling for the application of federal common law — instances in which “a federal rule of decision is ‘necessary to protect uniquely federal interests,’ ... and those in which Congress has given the courts the power to develop substantive law.” Tex. Indus., Inc. v. Radcliff Materials, Inc., 451 U.S. 630, 640, 101 S.Ct. 2061, 68 L.Ed.2d 500 (1981); Textile Workers Union v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 456-57, 77 S.Ct. 912, 1 L.Ed.2d 972 (1957) (federal law provides the substantive law to be applied in actions for violations of a collective bargaining agreement under section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947); see also FTC v. R.F. Keppel & Bro., Inc., 291 U.S. 304, 314, 54 S.Ct. 423, 78 L.Ed. 814 (1934) (stating that under the Federal Trade Commission Act federal courts are to determine what methods of competition are unfair, while giving weight to the Commission’s determination); cf. Grp. One, Ltd. v. Hallmark Cards, Inc., 254 F.3d 1041, 1047-48 (Fed.Cir.2001) (strong interest in uniform rule regarding on-sale bar in patent cases justifies reliance on federal common law generally informed by the Uniform Commercial Code and the Restatement of Contracts).

Fortunately, trade secret law varies little from state to state and is generally *1328governed by widely recognized authorities such as the Restatement of Unfair Competition and the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Moreover, the federal criminal statute governing theft of trade secrets bases its definition of trade secrets on the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, so there is no indication of congressional intent to depart from the general law in that regard. See 18 U.S.C. § 1839(3); H.R.Rep. No. 104-788, at 12 (1996), reprinted in 1996 U.S.C.C.A.N. 4021, 4031. In any event, there is no dispute in this case pertaining to the substantive law of trade secrets. The administrative law judge’s findings establish that TianRui obtained access to Amsted’s confidential information through former Datong employees, who were subject to duties of confidentiality imposed by the Datong code of employee conduct, and that TianRui exploited that information in producing the subject goods. TianRui does not take issue with those findings, which are sufficient to establish the elements of trade secret misappropriation under either Illinois law or the generally understood law of trade secrets, as reflected in the Restatement, the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and previous Commission decisions under section 337. Therefore, the choice of law issue, although it could be important in other cases, does not affect the outcome of this case.

In this case, TianRui argues that section 337 is inapplicable because Amsted’s confidential information was disclosed in China. The legal issue for us to decide is thus whether section 337 applies to imported goods produced through the exploitation of trade secrets in which the act of misappropriation occurs abroad.1 To answer that question, we must review the principles that apply to federal statutes that create causes of action based in part on conduct that occurs overseas.

B

It is a “longstanding principle of American law ‘that legislation of Congress, unless a contrary intent appears, is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.’ ” EEOC v. Arabian Am. Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244, 248, 111 S.Ct. 1227, 113 L.Ed.2d 274 (1991) (“Aramco ”). That presumption expresses a canon of construction that is rooted in the “commonsense notion that Congress generally legislates with domestic concerns in mind.” Smith v. United States, 507 U.S. 197, 204 n. 5, 113 S.Ct. 1178, 122 L.Ed.2d 548 (1993). The canon “serves to protect against unintended clashes between our laws and those of other nations which could result in international discord,” Aramco, 499 U.S. at 248, 111 S.Ct. 1227, and *1329“preserv[es] a stable background against which Congress can legislate with predictable effects.” Morrison v. Nat’l Austl. Bank Ltd., — U.S. -, 130 S.Ct. 2869, 2881, 177 L.Ed.2d 535 (2010). The presumption is not an end in itself, but functions as a tool for ascertaining congressional intent.2

The presumption against extraterritoriality does not govern this case, for three reasons. First, section 337 is expressly directed at unfair methods of competition and unfair acts “in the importation of articles” into the United States. As such, “this is surely not a statute in which Congress had only ‘domestic concerns in mind.’ ” Pasquantino v. United States, 544 U.S. 349, 371-72, 125 S.Ct. 1766, 161 L.Ed.2d 619 (2005) (holding that the wire fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1343, applied to a scheme to smuggle liquor into Canada without paying excise taxes because the statute refers to “communication in interstate or foreign commerce”). The focus of section 337 is on an inherently international transaction — importation. In that respect, section 337 is analogous to immigration statutes that bar the admission of an alien who has engaged in particular conduct or who makes false statements in connection with his entry into this country. See, e.g., 8 U.S.C. §§ 1101(f)(6), 1182(a). In such cases, the focus is not on punishing the conduct or the false statements, but on preventing the admission of the alien, so it is reasonable to assume that Congress was aware, and intended, that the statute would apply to conduct (or statements) that may have occurred abroad. See United States v. Villanueva, 408 F.3d 193, 199 (5th Cir.2005) (“Immigration statutes, by their very nature, pertain to activity at or near international borders. It is natural to expect that Congress intends for laws that regulate conduct that occurs near international borders to apply to some activity that takes place on the foreign side of those borders.”); United States v. Delgado-Garda, 374 F.3d 1337, 1345 (D.C.Cir.2004) (holding that a statute that “protects the borders of the United States against illegal immigration” would apply to extraterritorial acts by foreign nationals despite the lack of a clear statement of extraterritorial application because “ ‘the natural inference from the character of the offense[s]’ is that an extraterritorial location ‘would be a probable place for [their] commission,’ ” quoting United States v. Bowman, 260 U.S. 94, 99, 43 S.Ct. 39, 67 L.Ed. 149 (1922)).

Second, in this case the Commission has not applied section 337 to sanction purely extraterritorial conduct; the foreign “unfair” activity at issue in this case is relevant only to the extent that it results in the importation of goods into this country causing domestic injury. In light of the statute’s focus on the act of importation and the resulting domestic injury, the Commission’s order does not purport to regulate purely foreign conduct. See Morrison, 130 S.Ct. at 2884 (focusing the extraterritoriality analysis on the “objects of the statute’s solicitude”). Because foreign conduct is used only to establish an element of a claim alleging a domestic injury and seeking a wholly domestic remedy, the presumption against extraterritorial application does not apply. See Small v. United States, 544 U.S. 385, 388-89, 125 S.Ct. 1752, 161 L.Ed.2d 651 (2005) (noting that the presumption against extraterritorial application does not apply to a prosecution for the domestic possession of a gun by someone convicted in a foreign *1330court, although it would apply in considering whether the statute “prohibits unlawful gun possession abroad as well as domestically”); id. at 399, 125 S.Ct. 1752 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (agreeing with the majority that the presumption against extraterritorial application does not apply because “the Government is enforcing a domestic criminal statute to punish domestic criminal conduct”).

The dissent disregards the domestic elements of the cause of action under section 337 and characterizes this ease as involving “conduct which entirely occurs in a foreign country.” That characterization accurately describes most of the events constituting the misappropriation, but the determination of misappropriation was merely a predicate to the charge that Tian-Rui committed unfair acts in importing its wheels into the United States. In other words, the Commission’s interpretation of section 337 does not, as the dissent contends, give it the authority to “police Chinese business practices.”3 It only sets the conditions under which products may be imported into the United States.

Under the dissent’s construction of section 337, the importation of goods produced as a result of trade secret misappropriation would be immune from scrutiny if the act of misappropriation occurred overseas. That is, as long as the misappropriating party was careful to ensure that the actual act of conveying the trade secret occurred outside the United States, the Commission would be powerless to provide a remedy even if the trade secret were used to produce products that were subsequently imported into the United States to the detriment of the trade secret owner. We think it highly unlikely that Congress, which clearly intended to create a remedy for the importation of goods resulting from unfair methods of competition, would have intended to create such a conspicuous loophole for misappropriators.4

Third, the legislative history of section 337 supports the Commission’s interpretation of the statute as permitting the Commission to consider conduct that occurs abroad. Congress first enacted a prohibition against “unfair methods of competition” in the Federal Trade Commission Act, Pub.L. No. 63-203, § 5, 38 Stat. 717, 719 (1914), codified as amended at 15 U.S.C. § 45. Congress chose that phrase because it was “broader and more flexible” than the traditional phrase “unfair competition,” which had acquired a narrow meaning in its common law usages. R.F. Keppel, 291 U.S. at 310-12, 54 S.Ct. 423.

*1331Congress intended a similarly broad and flexible meaning when it used the same language to prohibit “unfair methods of competition” in importation. That provision was added to the law in the Tariff Act of 1922, Pub.L. No. 67-318, § 316(a), 42 Stat. 858, 943, pursuant to a recommendation of the Tariff Commission (the former name of the International Trade Commission) in a 1919 report.5 See U.S. Tariff Comm’n, Dumping and Unfair Foreign Competition in the United States and Canada’s Anti-dumping Law (1919) (“1919 Report”). In its report, the Commission identified several deficiencies in U.S. trade laws, including the absence of any remedy for unfair competition other than dumping, id. at 11, and the lack of any adequate “governmental machinery” for investigating allegations of dumping, “one element of which must be found abroad,” id. at 18. In a subsequent annual report, issued while the bill that was to become the 1922 Tariff Act was pending before Congress, the Commission renewed the recommendations from the 1919 report relating to unfair competition. See U.S. Tariff Comm’n, Fifth Annual Report 96 (1921).

In section 316 of the Tariff Act of 1922, Congress responded to the Commission’s recommendation by declaring “unfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation of articles into the United States” to be unlawful. That Act authorized the Tariff Commission to investigate allegations of such conduct in accordance with rules that the Commission would promulgate, and it gave the President the authority to impose additional duties or to exclude articles that the Commission found to be in violation of that provision. The Senate report on the 1922 Act explained that “[t]he provision relating to unfair methods of competition in the importation of goods is broad enough to prevent every type and form of unfair practice and is, therefore, a more adequate protection to American industry than any antidumping statute the country has ever had.” S.Rep. No. 67-595, pt. 1, at 3 (1922).

After the enactment of the Tariff Act of 1922, the Commission advised Congress that the new provisions “make it possible for the President to prevent unfair practices, even when engaged in by individuals residing outside the jurisdiction of the United States.” U.S. Tariff Comm’n, Sixth, Annual Report 4 (1922). When Congress subsequently enacted the Tariff Act of 1930, section 316 of the 1922 Act became section 337 of the new Act with some modifications to the provisions regarding remedies and judicial review. Congress did not, however, disagree with the Commission’s characterization of the prohibition on “unfair methods of competition” in the importation of articles into the United States, even though opponents criticized the Commission’s broad authority to investigate acts of unfair competition with respect to goods imported into this country. See Tariff Act of 1929, Vol. 17: Special and Administrative Provisions: Hearing on H.R. 2667 Before the S. Comm, on Finance, 71st Cong. 77-79 (1929) (statement of James W. Bevans, representing the National Council of American Importers & Traders, Inc.). In light of the legislative background, and in particular in view of the close working relationship between the Commission and *1332the relevant congressional committees,6 it is fair to conclude that Congress contemplated that, in exercising its new authority-over unfair competition, the Commission would consider conduct abroad in determining whether imports that were the products of, or otherwise related to, that conduct were unfairly competing in the domestic market.

The Commission’s interpretation of section 337 as reaching acts of trade secret misappropriation that occur abroad is consistent with the position it has taken regarding overseas acts of unfair competition since the enactment of section 337’s predecessor. See Sausage Casings, USITC Pub. 1624, 243-298 (Initial Determination); Tariff Comm’n, Sixth Annual Report 4. We have held that the Commission’s reasonable interpretations of section 337 are entitled to deference. See Enercon GmbH v. Int’l Trade Comm’n, 151 F.3d 1376, 1381 (Fed.Cir.1998); Corning Glass Works v. U.S. Int’l Trade Comm’n, 799 F.2d 1559, 1565 (Fed.Cir.1986). Thus, even if we were to conclude that section 337 is ambiguous with respect to its application to trade secret misappropriation occurring abroad, we would uphold the Commission’s interpretation of the scope of the statute. As it is, we conclude that the Commission’s longstanding interpretation is consistent with the purpose and the legislative background of the statute, and we therefore hold that it was proper for the Commission to find a section 337 violation based in part on acts of trade secret misappropriation occurring overseas.

C

TianRui argues that the Commission should not be allowed to apply domestic trade secret law to conduct occurring in China because doing so would cause improper interference with Chinese law. We disagree. In the first place, as we have noted, the Commission’s exercise of authority is limited to goods imported into this country, and thus the Commission has no authority to regulate conduct that is purely extraterritorial. The Commission does not purport to enforce principles of trade secret law in other countries generally, but only as that conduct affects the U.S. market. That is, the Commission’s investigations, findings, and remedies affect foreign conduct only insofar as that conduct relates to the importation of articles into the United States. The Commission’s activities have not hindered Tian-Rui’s ability to sell its wheels in China or any other country.

Second, TianRui has failed to identify a conflict between the principles of misappropriation that the Commission applied and Chinese trade secret law. Indeed, in its forum non conveniens motion TianRui argued that Chinese trade secret law would provide a “more than adequate” remedy for any alleged misappropriation. In addition, China has acceded to the *1333Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (“TRIPS”), Apr. 15, 1994, Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, Annex 1C. We cannot discern any relevant difference between the misappropriation requirements of TRIPS article 39 and the principles of trade secret law applied by the administrative law judge in this case. We therefore detect no conflict between the Commission’s actions and Chinese law that would counsel denying relief based on extraterritorial acts of trade secret misappropriation relating to the importation of goods affecting a domestic industry.

Finally, even apart from the acts of importation, the conduct at issue in this case is not the result of the imposition of legal duties created by American law on persons for whom there was no basis to impose such duties. The former Datong employees had a duty not to disclose Amsted’s trade secrets arising from express provisions in the Datong employee code and, in the case of most of the employees, from confidentiality agreements that they signed during their employment with Datong.7 Thus, the question in this case is whether the disclosure of protected information in breach of that duty is beyond the reach of section 337 simply because the breach itself took place outside the United States. To answer that question in the affirmative would invite evasion of section 337 and significantly undermine the effectiveness of the congressionally designed remedy.

D

Our conclusion that section 337 authorized the Commission’s actions in this case is not inconsistent with court decisions that have accorded a narrow construction to the extraterritorial application of U.S. patent law, in particular Microsoft Corp. v. AT & T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 127 S.Ct. 1746, 167 L.Ed.2d 737 (2007); Amgen, Inc. v. U.S. International Trade Commission, 902 F.2d 1532 (Fed.Cir.1990); and In re Amtorg Trading Corp., 22 CCPA 558, 75 F.2d 826 (1935). Those decisions focused on statutory provisions specific to patent law, especially the territorial limitations in the patent-granting clause. The import of those decisions is that the Commission’s broad and flexible authority to exclude from entry articles produced using “unfair methods of competition” cannot be used to circumvent express congressional limitations on the scope of substantive U.S. patent law. Because there is no parallel federal civil statute regulating trade secret protection, there is no statutory basis for limiting the Commission’s flexible authority under section 337(a)(1)(A) with respect to trade secret misappropriation.

In Amtorg, our predecessor court considered whether the Commission’s authority to investigate “[ujnfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation of articles into the United States” authorized the Commission to enjoin imports of products made by a patented process. It did not, the court concluded, because section 337 did not enlarge the substantive scope of patent law. At the time, the protections of a United States patent were expressly limited to United States territo*1334ries. 75 F.2d at 831, quoting 35 U.S.C. § 40 (1934). And the use or sale of a product made by a patented process did not constitute infringement of the process patent. Id. at 832. The court reasoned that the sale of products made abroad by a patented process must therefore be lawful unless “it was the purpose of Congress in enacting section 337 ... to broaden the field of substantive patent rights, and create rights in process patents extending far beyond any point to which the courts have heretofore gone in construing the patent statutes.” Id. at 834. After reviewing the legislative history, the court concluded that Congress did not intend to expand the scope of substantive patent law when it enacted section 337.

The court’s analysis in Amtorg primarily addressed the scope of patent law and only secondarily considered the Commission’s authority over “unfair methods of competition.” To the extent Amtorg construed the scope of the Commission’s jurisdiction over unfair methods of competition, Congress has subsequently rejected that construction in response to criticism by the Tariff Commission. In its next annual report to Congress after Amtorg was decided, the Commission criticized the decision for holding that “the importation for use or sale of products made abroad by a process patented in the United States was not an unfair method of competition.” U.S. Tariff Comm’n, Nineteenth Annual Report 12-13 (1936). In response to the Commission’s report, Congress amended the law to declare that the importation of products made by a process patented in the United States “shall have the same status for the purposes of section [337]” as the importation of a patented product. 19 U.S.C. § 1337a (1940); see S.Rep. No. 76-1903, at 1-2 (1940); H. Rep. No. 76-1781, at 1-2 (1940). Amtorg thus has no effect on the scope of the Commission’s authority to regulate trade secret misappropriation relating to the production of goods imported into this country.

Amgen and Microsoft are inapposite for similar reasons. In Amgen, the complainant asserted a product patent covering recombinant DNA and host cells against a different imported product, rEPO. 902 F.2d at 1534-35. Because the imported rEPO was produced abroad using the patented recombinant DNA and host cells, the complainant argued that the Commission had jurisdiction to bar its importation under 19 U.S.C. § 1337(a)(l)(B)(ii), the successor to section 1337a. We rejected that argument because section 1337(a)(l)(B)(ii) is limited to articles made abroad by a process patented in the United States, and the asserted patent covered products instead of processes. Because that decision did not address the Commission’s section 337(a)(1)(A) jurisdiction over unfair practices, it is not relevant to the question in this case.

In Microsoft, the Supreme Court addressed the scope of an exception to “the general rule under United States patent law that no infringement occurs when a patented product is made and sold in another country.” 550 U.S. at 441, 127 S.Ct. 1746. That exception, 35 U.S.C. § 271(f), allows infringement to be found when the “components” of a patented invention are supplied from the United States and combined abroad. The Court narrowly construed the term “component” to exclude the “intangible code” of an operating system because, inter alia, the presumption against extraterritorial application of United States law “applies with particular force in patent law.” 550 U.S. at 454-55, 127 S.Ct. 1746. Consequently, the Court held, the substantive patent right did not reach the sale of computers in foreign countries.

By contrast, as we have noted, the statutory prohibition on “unfair methods of *1335competition and unfair acts in the importation of articles ... into the United States” naturally contemplates that the unfair methods of competition and unfair acts leading to the prohibited importation will include conduct that takes place abroad. Because the statute applies to goods that are presented for importation, it would be a strained reading of the statute to bar the Commission from considering acts of trade secret misappropriation that occur abroad. In cases in which misappropriated trade secrets are used in the manufacture of the imported goods, the misappropriation will frequently occur overseas, where the imported goods are made. To bar the Commission from considering such acts because they occur outside the United States would thus be inconsistent with the congressional purpose of protecting domestic commerce from unfair methods of competition in importation such as trade secret misappropriation.

Ill

T