An early disposition request compresses an already short schedule into a sprint that starts before institution.

A respondent who wants a dispositive issue decided early asks for it before institution, typically around two weeks after the complaint is filed. If the Commission grants it, the notice of institution directs the ALJ to issue an initial determination on that issue within one hundred days.

The issues that have gone this route include standing, the economic prong of domestic industry, and patent eligibility. What they share is that they can be resolved on a defined record rather than the full one.

The timing problem nobody warns respondents about

The request goes in roughly two weeks after the complaint. That is before institution, before an ALJ is assigned, before a procedural schedule exists, and often before the respondent has retained a vendor or identified custodians.

If the request is granted, the respondent then has one hundred days to build an evidentiary record on the issue — inside a window where normal discovery is also beginning and the response to the complaint is due twenty days after service.

The practical consequence is that the decision to seek a 100-day order is also a decision about operational readiness, and it is made in the first fortnight.

What has to be in place before the request goes in

• A view of what evidence exists on the issue and where it sits, because asking for an early determination on a record you cannot assemble in one hundred days is a worse outcome than not asking
• Custodians and systems identified for the targeted issue, which on an economic prong challenge means the complainant’s production will arrive fast and need reading fast
• Collection capacity on standby rather than contracted after the grant
• Translation capacity if any relevant material is in Mandarin, Korean or Japanese, which on this docket it frequently is
• A plan for confidential treatment, since material going to the economic prong is almost entirely CBI and will need public versions on the same compressed clock

If the request is denied

Nothing has been wasted. The custodian map, the hold, the collection scope and the vendor relationship all carry into the ordinary schedule, which is itself tight. The work done to support a 100-day request is the work the investigation needs anyway, done earlier.

On the complainant side

A granted 100-day order means producing on the targeted issue immediately, at a point when the complaint has only just been filed and the rest of the investigation has not started. Complainants who have not assembled their domestic industry evidence before filing are exposed here.

What we hold ready

Pro-Legal Services supports Section 337 investigations from Arlington, Virginia, five miles from the Commission. Same-week forensic collection including from foreign custodians, overnight ESI processing, managed and AI-assisted review, certified translation with in-house ATA-certified translators, CBI redaction and public version preparation, and production built to the ALJ’s ground rules.

We are available 24/7/365. On a one-hundred-day clock that is not a slogan — it is the difference between an early determination and an early determination you were not ready for.

Related: ITC Section 337 litigation support, ITC respondent discovery support, ITC domestic industry evidence, confidential business information redaction, Section 337 translation services, forensic data collection, emergency eDiscovery.

Pro-Legal Services, Inc. supports Section 337 investigations from Arlington, Virginia, minutes from the U.S. International Trade Commission, for law firms in Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia and nationwide.

Considering an early disposition request? Tell us the issue and the likely evidence. We will tell you whether the record can realistically be built in a hundred days before you ask for a hundred days. Pro-Legal Services, Inc. · 1550 Wilson Blvd, Suite 250, Arlington, VA 22209 · 202-955-9400 · info@pro-legal.com