On March 25, 2026, the United States Supreme Court published a 9-0 opinion reversing the Fourth Circuit’s decision Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, authored by Justice Thomas, with Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Jackson, concurring in the judgment. The Fourth Circuit affirmed in part a jury verdict in favor of Sony, based on a claim of contributory liability for copyright infringement. The Supreme Court rejected the Fourth Circuit’s interpretation of contributory liability and held that a service provider must intend that their services be used to infringe on copyrighted works to be contributorily liable for copyright infringement.

As a follow-up to our earlier alert regarding potential refunds of IEEPA-based tariffs following the Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced that its new online refund system—the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (“CAPE”) portal, built within the Automated Commercial Environment (“ACE”)—will launch on April 20, 2026. Importers who paid duties under the unlawful IEEPA tariff programs can take several steps now to be ready to submit claims as soon as the system goes live. Notably, the CAPE process is being deployed in phases, and the initial phase is limited to certain unliquidated entries and certain entries that are no more than 80 days past their liquidation date. CBP has published additional guidance on the IEEPA duty refund process at https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/trade-remedies/ieepa-duty-refunds, and we encourage all potentially affected importers to review that guidance, begin preparing their entry data, and contact Cline Williams if you have any additional questions.

The United States Supreme Court recently held that tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”) were not authorized by statute. Accordingly, importers that paid duties under these programs may have the opportunity to recover those payments. The process for obtaining refunds continues to develop. The United States Court of International Trade has already begun addressing remedies for importers and the federal government is working to establish an online claims portal for importers. Recent representations by U.S. Customs and Border Protection indicate a streamlined system for IEEPA tariff refund claims could be ready as early as mid-April 2026. Businesses that acted as importers of record during the relevant period of the tariffs should begin preparing now to preserve and pursue potential refund claims.