Legible, indelible, and permanent
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The statutory standard is three adjectives
Section 304 of the Tariff Act of 1930 requires that the marking of the country of origin be legible, indelible, and permanent. Three words, each doing a different job.
Legible is about the reader, indelible about the ink, permanent about time
A marking can be indelible and illegible, or legible and temporary. The three together close the obvious ways a marking can be technically present and practically useless.
And then the regulation suggests manufacturing processes
As a general rule, marking requirements are best met by marking worked into the article at the time of manufacture.
With three worked examples, each tied to a material
On metal articles, die sunk, molded in or etched. On earthenware or chinaware, glazed on in the process of firing. On paper articles, imprinted.
Which is unusual for a labeling rule
Most of them specify what must be said and leave the method entirely alone. This one names processes, and the processes it names are all ways of making the marking part of the object rather than applied to it.
The permanence paragraph then sets the horizon
The degree of permanence should be at least sufficient to insure that in any reasonably foreseeable circumstance, the marking shall remain on the article or its container until it reaches the ultimate purchaser unless it is deliberately removed.
Unless it is deliberately removed is the only clause of its kind here
Six persistence horizons are now cataloged across this library and this is the only one that anticipates somebody taking the marking off on purpose and declines to require resistance to that.
And the marking must survive normal distribution and store handling
Which is a performance requirement stated in terms of a process rather than a test. Normal distribution and store handling is whatever actually happens to goods, and the marking has to get through it.
Then the sentence that makes this paragraph notable
The ultimate purchaser in the United States must be able to find the marking easily and read it without strain.
Without strain is a standard about a person, not about a measurement
No type size, no contrast ratio, no viewing distance. The test is whether a reader can read it comfortably, which is assessed on a person rather than with an instrument.
It is the second such test this library has found
The air transport exceptions ask whether a released gas causes extreme annoyance or discomfort to crew members so as to prevent the correct performance of assigned duties. Two agencies, two human-capability standards.
And find the marking easily is a separate requirement from reading it
A marking can be perfectly readable once located and impossible to locate. The paragraph asks for both, in the same way the care labeling rule asks that a label be seen or easily found.