An ITC Section 337 exclusion order is a border remedy: it directs U.S. Customs and Border Protection to stop infringing imported products from entering the United States. The remedy is what makes the U.S. International Trade Commission a distinct and consequential forum for consumer-device patent disputes — because the threat is not a check the importer writes, but a wall at the port that the importer's products cannot cross.

The statutory basis is Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, codified at 19 U.S.C. § 1337. The statute lists categories of "unlawful activities," and the one that drives most modern technology cases is the importation of patent-infringing articles. Section 1337(a)(1)(B) declares unlawful the importation, sale for importation, or sale within the United States after importation of articles that "infringe a valid and enforceable United States patent."

"The importation into the United States, the sale for importation, or the sale within the United States after importation by the owner, importer, or consignee, of articles that... infringe a valid and enforceable United States patent or a valid and enforceable United States copyright registered under title 17..."— 19 U.S.C. § 1337(a)(1)(B), source

What the ITC can and cannot do

The first thing to understand about a Section 337 case is what remedy is on the table. The ITC does not award money damages. Its principal remedies are the exclusion order and the cease-and-desist order. An exclusion order instructs Customs to refuse entry to the infringing articles. It can be a limited exclusion order, directed at the named respondents' products, or — in narrower circumstances the statute and Commission practice define — a general exclusion order reaching all infringing articles regardless of source. A cease-and-desist order, by contrast, targets infringing inventory already inside the United States, prohibiting its sale and distribution. The combination is why a Section 337 loss can functionally remove a product from the U.S. market in a way a damages judgment does not.

The second distinctive feature is the domestic-industry requirement. Section 337 is a trade statute, not merely a patent statute, so a complainant must show that an industry in the United States relating to the patented articles exists or is in the process of being established. The statute frames the economic prong around investments such as plant and equipment, labor and capital, or substantial investment in the patent's exploitation including engineering, research and development, or licensing. A patent owner with no qualifying U.S. activity cannot use Section 337 the way it could use a district court — the domestic-industry showing is a gate that district-court litigation does not have.

Why Section 337 looms over consumer electronics

For consumer devices, Section 337 matters because nearly every product in the category is imported. Phones, wearables, headphones, tablets, and accessories are predominantly manufactured abroad and brought into the United States, which places them squarely within the conduct the statute reaches. A patent holder asserting a consumer-device patent at the ITC is seeking to cut off the supply of the accused product at the border — a remedy whose commercial impact can exceed that of a damages award, because it can halt sales of an entire model rather than merely price the past infringement.

The procedural posture also differs from district court. Section 337 investigations are conducted before an administrative law judge under an expedited schedule and reviewed by the Commission; appeals go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The pace is fast by patent-litigation standards, and the absence of damages focuses the case entirely on liability and remedy. Because the same patents are often asserted in parallel in district court, where damages are available, complainants frequently run both tracks at once — the ITC for the import ban, the district court for money.

The statute also builds in a public-interest check on the remedy. Section 1337 directs the Commission, before issuing an exclusion or cease-and-desist order, to consider the effect of that remedy on "the public health and welfare, competitive conditions in the United States economy, the production of like or directly competitive articles in the United States, and United States consumers." If those public-interest factors weigh against exclusion, the Commission may decline to issue the order even after finding a violation. In practice the public-interest exception is invoked far more often than it succeeds, but it is a structural reminder that a Section 337 remedy is a trade measure: it is granted in the name of protecting a domestic industry, and the statute reserves the authority to withhold it where the cost to the broader public would be too high. There is also a presidential-review window — the President (acting through the U.S. Trade Representative) may disapprove a Commission remedy on policy grounds within a set period before it becomes final.

The 337 remedy versus a district-court injunction

A natural question is why a patent owner would choose the ITC's exclusion order over a district court's injunction. The answer lies in what changed for district courts. After the Supreme Court's eBay decision, a district-court injunction is no longer automatic on a finding of infringement; the patentee must satisfy a four-factor equitable test, and many prevailing patentees recover only damages. The ITC operates differently: the exclusion order is the statutory remedy for a Section 337 violation, and the Commission is not bound by the eBay four-factor framework when deciding whether to issue it. That difference is precisely why imported-product patent disputes — which describe most of the consumer-electronics category — gravitate to the Commission. For a patent owner whose real objective is to keep a rival's device off U.S. shelves rather than to collect a royalty, the border remedy that Section 337 makes available is the more direct instrument, subject only to the domestic-industry showing and the public-interest check the statute imposes.

Read against the statute, the shape of the remedy is clear. Section 337 makes importing infringing articles unlawful; the ITC investigates whether that unlawful conduct is occurring; and if it finds a violation, its answer is an exclusion order that keeps the goods out, backed by cease-and-desist orders against inventory already here. There is no damages line in that remedy — only the question of whether the accused product gets to enter the United States at all. For an imported consumer device, that question is frequently the whole business stake.