"DDTC's Keysight Settlement Highlights Trends Toward Aggressive Enforcement, Penalty Mitigation"
INTERNATIONAL TRADE TODAY'S EXPORT COMPLIANCE DAILY
Our International Alert on DDTC's ITAR Consent Agreement with Keysight Technologies was covered in Interntaional Trade Today's Export Compliance Daily newsletter. In the Alert, the authors, International Members Brian J. Fleming and Timothy P. O'Toole, Counsel Christopher Stagg, Senior Associate Caroline J. Watson, and Associates Manuel Levitt and Mary H. Mikhaeel argued that the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls' (DDTC) recent settlement with Keysight highlights the critical importance of companies ensuring the correctness of their jurisdiction and classification assessments - particularly with respect to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations' (ITAR) application to intangibles, such as software and technical data. It also shows DDTC continues to reward cooperation and other mitigating factors with signi?cant penalty reductions as it tries to incentivize companies to voluntarily disclose violations and work with the agency during its investigation. Additionally, the Keysight case displays the numerous considerations that must be carefully examined when there is a jurisdiction and classification dispute with the government, including the heightened importance in this context of DDTC's commodity jurisdiction procedure for an official determination.
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