The United States Appellate Court for the Eight Circuit upheld earlier today a $35 million judgment against TKS, a Japanese printing press manufacturer, for flooding the U.S. market with unfairly priced press equipment with the intent of harming U.S. industry. The appellate court found that the actions of TKS violated U.S. law and it then affirmed a jury’s award of damages to Goss International Corporation. “This is a positive decision for the overall concept of free trade and fair, rules-based competition, as much as it is a positive decision for Goss,” according to Bob Brown, CEO of Goss International . “The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed that a foreign company that deliberately breaks trade laws and then commits fraud in an attempt to hide its illegal actions must be prevented from harming an industry and undermining free trade.” The U.S. Appellate Court for the Eight Circuit summarized the issue in the case as “whether a foreign corporation merely competed with a domestic manufacturer in the printing press industry in the United States, or whether the foreign corporation intended to injure or destroy the printing press industry … by dumping underpriced products onto that market.” In its opinion, the appellate court cited trial evidence of the intent by TKS to dump its products and to injure Goss, finding that “the jury heard evidence that TKS dumped over $125 million worth of printing press additions onto the United States market in the 1990s.” The court also noted evidence that “TKS attempted to cover up its dumping” by making secret deals with newspapers, trying to destroy evidence of its dumping, and seeking to avoid written agreements when trying to skirt the law. “We believe vigorous, fair competition among multiple suppliers is the only way to sustain innovation and deliver the economic value the newspaper industry needs,” according to Bob Brown. “The illegal actions of TKS represent an unacceptable approach to competition. I think anyone involved in the newspaper industry would find the straightforward description of these illegal actions in the latest 32-page U.S. Court of Appeals judgment to be of interest.” The judgment is accessible at http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/06/01/042604P.pdf. In a separate proceeding, the U.S. Department of Commerce is reviewing TKS’s conduct during an earlier administrative investigation of TKS’s dumping. Last May, the Department self-initiated a “changed circumstances” review of its investigation of Japanese press importations in light of evidence that TKS had provided false information to the government about TKS’s sales to a newspaper in the U.S. In September, the Department preliminarily found that TKS’s fraud allowed TKS to avoid paying antidumping duties. The Department also found that the fraud caused Goss to lose sales and hurt Goss’s ability to continue to produce products in the United States, costing U.S. manufacturing jobs. Thus, the Secretary of Commerce has proposed several measures to rectify TKS’s fraud to “protect the integrity of the Department’s proceedings.” The Department’s final decision is expected on March 1.