Blocking Aftermarket Parts At The Border

Short answer: The border remedy is real, and it has been used against aftermarket collision parts. But in most of the investigations we could enumerate, the deciding question was never whether the part infringes: it was a domestic industry threshold that has nothing to do with the part itself, and the one contested infringement ruling in this docket went against the aftermarket, in 2007.

By Anthony Braswell for Quorum Industries LLC, The Autobody Directory · Updated 2026-09-06 · How this was written, and what the machine may not do

How this page was produced: Researched, drafted and checked with AI assistance under human direction, and signed off by the named author. How this site is written

How we counted, and why there is no number on this page

The load-bearing thing about this page is not any one case. It is the claim that the merits were reached rarely, and in only one contested determination. That claim is only as good as the search behind it, so here is the search.

The instrument. The Federal Register publishes every Commission notice instituting, terminating or determining a section 337 investigation. We queried its full-text document index, restricted to the International Trade Commission, for the word "automotive" and separately for the phrase "vehicle parts". On 4 September 2026 those queries returned 179 Commission documents and four Commission documents respectively.

The control. A search that returns things is not the same as a search that returns the right things. So before trusting what came back, we checked that the index carries title-level notices for every investigation we already knew about, and it does: the grille case, both Certain Automotive Parts investigations, the gray market Hyundai parts case, both replacement lamp cases, and the live GM case. The instrument fires on the exact shape of the thing being counted.

The rule we applied. An investigation is in the set if the accused articles are parts fitted to vehicles, whether body panels, lamps, wheels or mechanical parts, and whether the asserted right is a design patent or a trademark. Investigations into whole vehicles are out. That rule is broader than "collision parts", and it has to be, because a set that admits gray market brake pads cannot coherently exclude replacement wheels.

What the instrument cannot do. An investigation whose notices never use the word "automotive" or the phrase "vehicle parts" would not appear at all. And the index demonstrably lost the single most important document in this set: the 2007 exclusion order itself is not in it, as the section below explains. There is also at least one title in the index, Certain Automotive Fuel Caps and Components Thereof, whose investigation number, dates and scope we did not establish and which we therefore do not list below.

So this page gives you the query and the list, and no total. A total is the sentence on a page like this one most likely to be wrong, and ours has been wrong twice: once when 337-TA-557 turned up after we had recorded that no contested finding existed, and again when 337-TA-1006 turned up after we had settled on a figure. A list can be added to. A number has to be retracted.

What is actually happening at the border

Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 lets a patent holder ask the International Trade Commission, rather than a court, to stop infringing goods at the border. The Commission does not award damages. Its remedy is an exclusion order directed at US Customs: a limited order naming particular importers, or a general exclusion order that bars the article from entry no matter who is bringing it in.

Two things about that remedy matter to a shop or a car owner. First, the named parties in these proceedings are manufacturers, importers and distributors, and no order in the set has ever named a body shop, an insurer or the owner of a car. But a general exclusion order does not name anybody. It bars the article from entry whoever imports it, and a shop that imports parts directly is an importer like any other. What no instrument in this set does is reach a repair already carried out or a car already on the road.

Second, before the Commission ever gets to whether a part infringes, the complainant has to clear a threshold that has nothing to do with the part: it must show a domestic industry. The statute asks whether there is in the United States, "with respect to the articles protected by the patent", one of three things:

(A) significant investment in plant and equipment; (B) significant employment of labor or capital; or (C) substantial investment in its exploitation, including engineering, research and development, or licensing.

Read the recurring phrase, because it is the hinge of the modern cases: not investment in the company, or in cars, but investment in the articles protected by the patent. That threshold, and not infringement, is what has decided most of this docket.

Where the merits were actually reached: 337-TA-557

Inv. No. 337-TA-557, Certain Automotive Parts, was brought by Ford Global Technologies, LLC in December 2005 on fourteen design patents against six respondents, including Keystone Automotive Industries, U.S. Autoparts Network, and the Taiwanese manufacturers Gordon, Y.C.C., TYC Brother and DEPO. Three of those manufacturers are respondents in the live 2026 case.

An administrative law judge heard it and issued a final initial determination on 4 December 2006. The Federal Register notice records what he found: that "the '119, '912, and '979 patents are invalid due to public use", and that "the '890, '552, '135, '579, '561, '044, and '615 patents are not invalid, are enforceable, and are infringed". Those are the judge's findings, not the Commission's.

Both sides fought it. "On December 15, 2006, Ford and the Respondents filed petitions for review." No respondent defaulted. The Commission declined to review the determination on 20 March 2007, which is the step that made the judge's findings the agency's, and on 6 June 2007 it issued a document captioned "NOTICE OF FINAL DETERMINATION OF VIOLATION OF SECTION 337 AND ISSUANCE OF GENERAL EXCLUSION ORDER; TERMINATION OF THE INVESTIGATION; DENIAL OF MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION", whose first sentence states that the Commission "has determined to find a violation of section 337". The ordering paragraphs name the parts, one per patent: "Motor vehicle grilles", "Vehicle head lamps", "Lower bumper valances" twice over, "Vehicle side view mirrors", and "Vehicle tail lamps" twice over. Each was excluded "for the remaining term of the patent, except under license of the patent owner or as provided by law."

That is the front and the back of a car. Keystone Automotive Industries, then among the largest aftermarket collision parts distributors in the country by its own account, described it in exactly those words to its own shareholders. Keystone's news release of 8 June 2007, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, says: "The general exclusion order prohibits the importation by any importer of aftermarket collision parts that violate any of Ford's seven design patents that were previously determined to be valid."

The same release gives the scale, and it is a useful corrective to the trade-press version in which every filing is existential. Keystone told shareholders that "parts currently offered by Keystone related to this ruling represented less than 0.1 percent of the company's total sales in fiscal 2007." It also recorded that "the respondents believe they will need to appeal to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit." Whether any appeal was filed, and what came of it, we did not establish.

One more thing follows from the order's own wording. It runs only "for the remaining term of the patent". Every one of those patents had been granted before Ford filed its complaint in December 2005, and design patents of that vintage ran fourteen years from grant, so on that arithmetic all of them had expired by the end of 2019. We did not find a document saying so, we do not give a month, and we present this as arithmetic rather than as a finding. If the arithmetic holds, the 2007 order is a precedent about what the forum can do rather than a live restriction on anyone's supply today.

Why almost nobody knew that case existed

The Federal Register index carries the notice instituting 337-TA-557 and carries the notice that the Commission would not review a finding of violation. It does not contain the June 2007 order itself. An enumeration built on that index therefore sees the case start, sees a violation found, and then sees nothing at all. The docket appears to stop mid-sentence. The order lives in the Commission's own exclusion order directory at usitc.gov, which nobody queries if nobody knows there is an order to find. Our own earlier work on this sector recorded, wrongly, that no contested finding had ever issued. It had, in 2007, and the correction is the most useful thing on this page. It is also the reason the section above tells you what our search can and cannot see.

The rest of the docket, and what each was really decided on

The detail behind those rows:

• 337-TA-540, Certain Automotive Grilles (2005). Ford withdrew its own complaint. The Federal

Register notice records the reason: "Ford indicated that it sought a withdrawal in order to investigate two alleged items of prior art brought to its attention by one of the respondents." A complainant moved by prior art is a merits outcome that no finding records.

• 337-TA-651 (2009). Terminated on settlement as to most respondents and a consent order as

to U.S. Autoparts. No finding of infringement, no finding of violation.

• 337-TA-1006, Certain Passenger Vehicle Automotive Wheels (2016). Daimler AG of Stuttgart

filed on 11 April 2016 and the Commission instituted on 13 June 2016, over what its news release calls "automotive wheels with certain designs and/or trademarks that are used with Mercedes-Benz automobiles". The release names eleven respondents from the aftermarket wheel and tire trade, Amazon.com among them. It ended on 15 February 2017 on an unopposed motion resting on withdrawal of the allegations against the last three respondents. No finding of infringement, no finding of violation.

• 337-TA-1160 (2020). A trademark case about gray market goods, not replica parts, brought by

Hyundai on four registered marks. One respondent settled by consent order and the rest did not appear, so the exclusion order issued against the defaulting respondents under 19 U.S.C. 1337(g)(1), under which "the Commission shall presume the facts alleged in the complaint to be true and shall, upon request, issue an exclusion from entry or a cease and desist order, or both, limited to that person". Nothing was contested, because nobody who stayed in contested it.

• 337-TA-1291 and 337-TA-1292, the replacement lamp cases (2024). These are the two the

aftermarket cites as wins, and what they decided is narrower than the reporting suggests. At first instance the judges found for the complainants. In 1291 the judge found a violation with respect to a list of design patents that the Commission's notice sets out one by one, seventeen of them by our count of that list. The Commission then reviewed and "determined to vacate the IID and the Final ID's economic prong findings and find that Kia has failed to satisfy the economic prong of the domestic industry requirement with respect to any of the Asserted Patents", and found no violation on that ground alone. On everything else it said: "The Commission has further determined to take no position on the issues of infringement, satisfaction of the technical prong of the domestic industry requirement, and invalidity." The 1292 determination ended the same way, in no violation on the domestic industry ground. We tried to re-open its Federal Register page on 5 September 2026 and the page returned a server error, so nothing from 1292 is quoted here.

• 337-TA-1491 (instituted March 2026, live). General Motors LLC and GM Global Technology

Operations LLC, twenty design patents, thirty-five respondents, over "vehicle parts that replicate parts on certain GM vehicles and components thereof". That respondent figure is not a count of any one document, and it matters that you know which document says what. The notice of institution named twenty. The Commission terminated the investigation as to one of them, Best Value Auto Body Supply, on a consent order on 3 June 2026. It then added sixteen more, on GM's unopposed motion, in a determination voted 22 June 2026 and published 24 June 2026. Twenty, less one, plus sixteen. All three numbers were read off the two Federal Register notices on 2026-09-06, and the twenty was counted from the raw text with a check that fails if any single name is removed from the list. Two of the thirty-five are collision-estimating software companies, CCC Intelligent Solutions and Mitchell International, and neither notice says what either of them is alleged to have done. The reason GM gave for adding sixteen respondents four months in is in the record: "it did not have the information necessary for the allegations until it received information during discovery." The complainants "request that the Commission institute an investigation and, after the investigation, issue a general exclusion order, a limited exclusion order, and cease and desist orders." The notice puts the domestic industry question in issue: "whether an industry in the United States exists or is in the process of being established as required by subsection (a)(2) of section 337". Nothing has been decided.

What we could not verify

The 2024 lamp determinations are not a clearance. The Commission said it was taking no position on whether the parts infringe. The judges' findings that they do infringe were not reversed; the Commission simply declined to say whether they were right, and what legal weight such a finding retains is a question we looked for and did not settle.

We are not saying that aftermarket collision parts do not infringe. The opposite has been found: at the Commission in 2007, and separately in court, where the Automotive Body Parts Association sued Ford and lost, the Federal Circuit affirming on 23 July 2019 that "the aesthetic appeal of a design to consumers is inadequate to render that design functional" and that "the purchaser may not create new hoods and headlamps using Ford's designs." That is a different forum from the border, and this page is about the border.

We do not claim that the investigations listed above are all there have ever been. The list is a statement about one query against one index, on one date, and that index lost the most important document in the set. If you find another, the list was incomplete, which is the condition it was published in. We also do not know what became of four of the fourteen patents Ford asserted in 557: the 2007 notice accounts for ten.

And this page makes no claim about how 337-TA-1491 will come out. It is live, the domestic industry question is undecided, and nothing in the 2024 reasoning turned on where a complainant is incorporated. The Commission's ground was about aggregating investments and proving them patent by patent, and it never mentions nationality. Anyone telling you the outcome is already obvious, in either direction, is guessing.

The specific things we could not read or could not pin down, listed so you can see them:

• The Federal Register page for the 337-TA-1292 determination. The host returned a server error

when we tried to re-open it on 5 September 2026, so no wording from 1292 is quoted anywhere on this page, and its outcome is reported from the 1291 determination and the docket alone.

• The June 2007 general exclusion order in the Federal Register index. It is not there. The order

quoted here comes from the Commission's own exclusion order directory at usitc.gov, so the index this page's enumeration rests on is known to be missing the set's most important document.

• Certain Automotive Fuel Caps and Components Thereof. The title is in the index, but its

investigation number, dates and scope would not confirm, so it is not listed in the table above and it is not counted anywhere.

• Any appeal from the 2007 order. Keystone told shareholders the respondents believed they would

need to appeal to the Federal Circuit. Whether one was filed, and what came of it, we did not establish.

• The expiry of the seven patents behind the 2007 order. No document saying they have expired was

found. The 2019 date given above is arithmetic from the grant dates and the fourteen year term, presented as arithmetic and not as a finding.

• Four of the fourteen design patents Ford asserted in 337-TA-557. The 2007 notice accounts for

ten, and we found nothing recording what became of the other four.

• Any total number of investigations in this set. The query and the list are published above

precisely because no total could be verified.

What a reader can actually do

Not much directly, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise: these proceedings run between patent holders, importers and manufacturers, and there is no step in them for a shop or a car owner. What you can do is treat availability as the signal. If a replacement panel or lamp for a particular model becomes hard to source, the reason may be a border instrument rather than a supply problem, and the instrument is public: the Commission publishes its exclusion orders by investigation number, and the Federal Register carries the institution and determination notices. If a supplier tells you a part is unavailable "because of the ITC", the order that says so can be read. If they tell you a part is cleared because the aftermarket won in 2024, the determination that supposedly says so is linked below, and it says the opposite of cleared: it says the question was not reached.

Sources

• Notice of Commission determination not to review a final determination of violation, Inv. No.

337-TA-557 (26 March 2007), read on 2026-09-04: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/E7-5465

• General exclusion order and final determination of violation, Inv. No. 337-TA-557 (6 June 2007),

read on 2026-09-04: https://www.usitc.gov/intellectual_property/exclusion_orders/337-ta-557.pdf

• Keystone Automotive Industries, Inc., news release of 8 June 2007, filed with the SEC, read on

2026-09-04: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1012393/000119312507133195/dex991.htm

• Termination of Inv. No. 337-TA-540 on withdrawal of the complaint (2005), read on 2026-09-04:

https://www.federalregister.gov/d/05-16057

• ITC news release on institution of Inv. No. 337-TA-1006 (13 June 2016), read on 2026-09-04:

https://www.usitc.gov/press_room/news_release/2016/er0613ll611.htm

• Termination of Inv. No. 337-TA-1006 (15 February 2017), read on 2026-09-04:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/02/15/2017-02987/certain-passenger-vehicle-automotive-wheels-commission-determination-not-to-review-initial

• Final determination of no violation, Inv. No. 337-TA-1291 (13 March 2024), read on 2026-09-04:

https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-05272

• Final determination of no violation, Inv. No. 337-TA-1292 (13 March 2024). This page is not

quoted here: the host returned a server error when we tried to re-open it on 5 September 2026: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2024-05273

• Notice of institution, Inv. No. 337-TA-1491 (12 March 2026), read on 2026-09-04, and the raw

text of the same document read again on 2026-09-06 to count the respondents: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2026-04838 and https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/full_text/text/2026/03/12/2026-04838.txt

• Determination not to review the initial determination granting an unopposed motion to amend the

complaint and notice of investigation, Inv. No. 337-TA-1491, voted 22 June 2026 and published 24 June 2026, read in full on 2026-09-06. This is the document that adds the sixteen respondents, records the termination as to Best Value on a consent order, and carries GM's stated reason for the amendment: https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2026-12722 and https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/full_text/text/2026/06/24/2026-12722.txt

• Automotive Body Parts Association v. Ford Global Technologies, LLC, No. 18-1613 (Fed. Cir.,

23 July 2019), read on 2026-09-04: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/18-1613/18-1613-2019-07-23.html

• 19 U.S.C. 1337, quoted here after confirming the same wording on two independent hosts,

uscode.house.gov and govinfo.gov, both read on 2026-09-04: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title19-section1337&num=0&edition=prelim and https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2023-title19/html/USCODE-2023-title19-chap4-subtitleII-partII-sec1337.htm

Corrections

2026-09-06. No correction. The respondent figure in 337-TA-1491 was right, and we nearly replaced it with a wrong one. The page said thirty-five. Re-reading the notice of institution for an unrelated question, we counted the respondents in it and got twenty, twice, on two different instruments. Thirty-five looked like an error and an edit changing it to twenty was written.

It was not an error. The notice of institution names twenty. The Commission then terminated the investigation as to Best Value Auto Body Supply on a consent order on 3 June 2026, and added sixteen more respondents in a determination voted 22 June 2026. Twenty, less one, plus sixteen, is thirty-five, and thirty-five is the number of respondents in the live investigation. The correction was reverted before publication and the sentence now shows all three numbers and where each one comes from, which is what it should have done in the first place.

The count was not wrong. The question was. Our instrument was accurate about the notice of institution and the sentence was about the investigation, and nothing in either the number or the check said which of those it meant. A bare figure in a sentence carries no record of the question it answers, so the next reader supplies one, and the next reader here was us.

Any actual correction will be recorded here with the date, what the page used to say, and why it changed.

One thing about how the page got its present shape belongs here, because it explains the absence a reader will notice. Two pre-publication drafts each carried a count of the section 337 investigations in this set, and each count turned out to be wrong: the first was written after we had recorded that no contested finding existed, and 337-TA-557 then surfaced; the second was written after we had settled on a figure, and 337-TA-1006 then surfaced. That is why the published page carries no total at all and sets out its query, its control and the limits of its index instead. Those were drafts, not published claims, and no reader ever saw either number.

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