Trade Secrets

Sino Legend v. ITC: A 10-Year Import Ban and the Limits of Comity

The ITC barred a Chinese chemical maker's imports for trade-secret theft committed in China, and the Federal Circuit and Supreme Court let the exclusion order stand despite a contrary result in Chinese courts.

July 14, 2025
Industrial chemical reactor vessels and piping at a rubber resin plant
Sino Legend confirmed that an ITC exclusion order for foreign trade-secret theft can survive even when a foreign court reaches the opposite conclusion. Shutterstock
Educational content, not legal advice. This article explains general legal concepts. It does not create an attorney–client relationship. For your specific situation, consult a licensed attorney.

The case is Sino Legend (Zhangjiagang) Chemical Co. v. International Trade Commission, an appeal docketed in the Federal Circuit as No. 2014-1478 and resolved by summary affirmance on December 11, 2015, arising from the U.S. International Trade Commission’s final determination in Certain Rubber Resins and Processes for Manufacturing Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-849. The Commission issued that final determination on January 15, 2014, and the Supreme Court closed the matter by denying certiorari (No. 16-428) on January 9, 2017. Across three tribunals, the result held: a Chinese manufacturer’s products would be barred from the United States for ten years because of trade secrets stolen in China. Sino Legend is the case that proved TianRui was not a one-off—and it surfaced the hardest problem the ITC’s extraterritorial reach creates, the prospect of a U.S. import ban resting on conduct a foreign court had declined to condemn.

At a glance

  • Case: Sino Legend (Zhangjiagang) Chemical Co. v. International Trade Commission, Fed. Cir. No. 2014-1478; cert. denied, No. 16-428
  • Underlying proceeding: Certain Rubber Resins and Processes for Manufacturing Same, ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-849
  • Complainant: SI Group, Inc.
  • Respondents: Sino Legend and affiliated entities, including Red Avenue Chemical Co.
  • ITC final determination: January 15, 2014
  • Federal Circuit: Summary affirmance, December 11, 2015
  • Supreme Court: Certiorari denied, January 9, 2017
  • Holding: The ITC’s authority under Section 337 to bar imports for foreign trade-secret misappropriation, established in TianRui, was applied and left undisturbed, yielding a ten-year exclusion order
  • Significance: Cemented TianRui as durable law and squarely raised the comity question of a U.S. import ban conflicting with a foreign court’s contrary judgment

The trade secret and the theft

SI Group manufactures tackifiers—rubber resins used to bind the rubber compounds in tires. The formulas and processes behind those resins were the company’s closely held trade secrets, developed over years and deployed at SI Group facilities including operations in China. According to the Commission’s findings, an employee with access to that proprietary information left SI Group, joined Sino Legend, and carried SI Group’s tackifier know-how with him. Sino Legend then began producing competing rubber resins and importing them into the United States.

As in TianRui, the misappropriation was foreign through and through. The employee’s access, his departure, and the disclosure and use of the formulas all occurred in China. The single domestic event was importation: Sino Legend’s resins crossing into the U.S. market in competition with SI Group’s domestic industry. That fact pattern made Inv. No. 337-TA-849 a direct test of whether TianRui’s logic would hold in a second industry, on a second set of facts.

The Commission’s determination and the ten-year ban

After a full investigation, the administrative law judge found a Section 337 violation premised on trade-secret misappropriation and recommended exclusion. On January 15, 2014, the Commission issued its final determination confirming that Sino Legend and certain affiliates had violated Section 337 by importing rubber resins made using SI Group’s misappropriated trade secrets. It imposed a ten-year exclusion order barring the entry of the offending products into the United States, along with cease-and-desist relief.

The ten-year term is itself instructive. Trade-secret exclusion orders are typically calibrated to the “head start” the misappropriator unfairly gained—the time it would have taken to develop the technology legitimately or for the secret to be lawfully reverse-engineered or otherwise dissipate. A decade-long ban signals the Commission’s assessment that the stolen tackifier processes conferred a substantial and durable competitive advantage, and it illustrates how potent the Section 337 remedy can be against a foreign competitor: not damages to be collected through a foreign enforcement apparatus, but a self-executing border measure administered by U.S. Customs.

The Federal Circuit’s summary affirmance and the comity problem

Sino Legend appealed, raising two principal challenges: that the Commission lacked authority to adjudicate trade-secret misappropriation occurring entirely outside the United States, and that the Commission should have deferred to parallel proceedings in the Chinese courts. The Federal Circuit was unmoved. It affirmed summarily under Rule 36—issuing judgment without a written opinion just days after argument—a disposition that telegraphed how settled the panel considered the extraterritoriality question to be after TianRui. There was, in the court’s evident view, nothing new to decide.

The deference argument, however, pointed at a genuinely unresolved tension. Sino Legend had urged the Commission to weigh ongoing litigation in the Chinese courts over the same alleged theft—litigation in which, as widely reported, Sino Legend fared considerably better than it had in Washington. The specter that emerged was a direct conflict of sovereign judgments: a foreign court declining to find misappropriation under its own law, and a U.S. agency simultaneously barring the resulting goods from the American market based on the same underlying conduct. Sino Legend pressed exactly that concern to the Supreme Court.

Its certiorari petition, No. 16-428, asked whether Section 337 permits the ITC to adjudicate trade-secret misappropriation alleged to have occurred outside the United States—an invitation to revisit TianRui and to consider whether comity required deference to the courts of the place where the conduct occurred. On January 9, 2017, the Court denied the petition. The denial set no precedent of its own, but its practical effect was decisive: TianRui’s rule would stand, and the comity objection—however weighty in principle—would not unsettle a Section 337 exclusion order built on foreign conduct.

Open questions

The denial of certiorari left the central tension intact rather than resolved. Sino Legend establishes that an ITC exclusion order can coexist with a contrary foreign judgment, but it does not explain how much weight, if any, the Commission must give a foreign court’s adjudication of the same theft. It leaves unsettled whether there is any point at which a fully litigated, final foreign judgment in the respondent’s favor should foreclose or temper Section 337 relief, or whether the importation-and-domestic-injury framework simply renders the foreign result irrelevant. It also leaves open how the Commission should handle evidentiary records developed under foreign procedural regimes, and whether the federal misappropriation standard announced in TianRui can diverge so far from the law of the place of conduct that the divergence itself raises fairness concerns. Because the Federal Circuit affirmed without opinion, the case offers no reasoning to cabin these questions—only an outcome.

Implications

  • TianRui is durable. Sino Legend applied TianRui in a new industry and survived review at both the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court, confirming the ITC as a reliable forum for foreign trade-secret theft.
  • Exclusion terms can be long. A ten-year ban demonstrates that Section 337 relief is calibrated to the misappropriator’s unfair head start and can impose years of market exclusion.
  • A favorable foreign judgment is not a shield. Prevailing in the courts of the place where the theft occurred does not, by itself, prevent a U.S. import ban for the same conduct.
  • Comity remains unresolved. The Commission’s obligation, if any, to defer to parallel foreign proceedings is an open and recurring fault line that future investigations will have to confront.
  • The ITC’s remedy is self-executing. Unlike a foreign-enforced damages judgment, an exclusion order operates at the U.S. border through Customs, making it especially attractive against respondents with limited U.S. assets.

Frequently asked questions

Why did the Federal Circuit affirm without a written opinion? The court used Rule 36 summary affirmance, which permits a judgment of affirmance without an opinion when the issues are adequately resolved by existing law. After TianRui, the panel evidently regarded the extraterritoriality question as settled, and it affirmed days after oral argument.

Did the contrary Chinese proceedings change the outcome? No. Sino Legend urged the Commission and later the Supreme Court to account for parallel litigation in the Chinese courts, in which it fared better than at the ITC. The exclusion order nonetheless stood; the Supreme Court denied certiorari, leaving the U.S. import ban in place despite the foreign result.

What did the certiorari petition ask, and what did the denial mean? Petition No. 16-428 asked whether Section 337 lets the ITC adjudicate trade-secret misappropriation occurring outside the United States—effectively asking the Court to reconsider TianRui. The January 9, 2017 denial set no binding precedent but left TianRui and the exclusion order undisturbed.

Authorities and sources