Counterfeiting: What if you worked closely with customs to act effectively?

The mission of customs is to control the flow of goods from international trade in order to protect the legal economy and consumers.

Unfortunately, the customs services in Paris region have seen an increase of almost 19% in their activity over the last two years.

Partnership with IP rights holders are essential in the fight against counterfeiting.

Indeed, independently and in addition to the filing of trademarks, patents or designs, the Application for Action with Customs is a formidable tool to act quickly and efficiently at a lower cost.

This application will materialize the partnership between the customs and the rights holders. It allows the customs to act in relation to a detected counterfeit. In practice, the right holder has the customs authorities monitor the presence of goods that infringe his trademark, patent or design, in order to quickly remove them from the market. The customs authorities can thus retain the goods, to give the owner time to check the products and confirm or not the counterfeit character.

After confirmation, the destruction of the products can be very fast and the damage effectively stopped.

With the sanitary crisis, e-commerce has become part of the consumers’ habits, and the customs have reinforced and evolved their activity.

From now on, the Cyber customs collects, enriches and exploits the information allowing to fight effectively against the frauds on Internet. It is not competent to intervene in information transmission operations carried out via the Internet (downloading music files, for example) since it controls the flow of goods.

This is why it has reinforced its action within the postal and express freight, which is the preferred mode of transport for counterfeit goods sold on the Internet, and the seizures made in this context are constantly increasing.

To prevent or handle counterfeit acts,  can assist you in the implementation of a customs surveillance, and maintain the partnership with the customs for a peaceful exploitation of your rights.

− Ghislaine BERTIN, Paralegal at Mark & Law

Sources: www.douane.gouv.fr