CBP's Country of Origin Software Ruling Gives Guidance on Gov't Acquisitions, Says Talend

A CBP advisory ruling regarding the country of origin of imported software products and their acquisition by the government marks a new understanding for software developed outside the U.S., said Talend, an open source software company. The company said in a press release the CBP ruling will benefit software vendors of all types.

The ruling said Talend's database management system software country of origin is France and that the company's application integration software's country origin is either France or Germany, wherever the software build is performed. Both France and Germany are "designated countries" under the Trade Agreements Act (TAA). The non-binding advisory ruling, dated June 8, notes the ruling calls "attention to a well established interpretation or principal of law relating to the country of origin, without applying it to a particular set of facts," it said.

For both products, CBP said the software are substantially transformed into a new article with a new name, character and use where the software build occurs. That finding is important in that the software build is the determining factor, even when a "majority of its source code was created in a non-designated country," said Talend. Talend won't be pursing a further determination as there's no practical need, said Talend's lawyer, Fern Lavallee of DLA Piper, by email.

Guidance on Software Transformation

The advisory ruling provides some significant guidance for the government's future purchases of open source software, said Talend's lawyer in the press release. "The Talend Ruling is significant because government users now have useful guidance specifically addressing open source software that is developed and substantially transformed in a designated country, but also includes, or is based upon, source code from a non-designated country," said Lavallee. "Federal Agencies can now purchase open source software products like Talend software based on its true technical merits, including ease of use, flexibility, robust documentation and data components and its substantial life-cycle cost advantages, while also having complete confidence in the product’s full compliance with threshold requirements like the TAA. The timing of this Ruling is right given the Department of Defense’s well publicized attention and commitment to Better Buying Power and DoD’s recent Open Systems Architecture initiative."

Email ITTNews@warren-news.com for a copy of the CBP advisory ruling.

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