The European Union Customs can be used to disclose counterfeiting goods according to an efficient process that is easy to settle.
The owner of a Community Trademark must send to the Customs of its country an “intervention petition”. This petition must detail the main information concerning the authentic goods, the current type of possible counterfeiting, the countries in which the goods have to be monitored and the representatives to contact for each country in case of counterfeiting.
The owner of a national or international trademark is in a position to file an intervention request before the Customs services of each European country which all offer Customs Monitoring. Once the Customs have disclosed counterfeiting goods that match the details of the petition or intervention requests, the owner or its representative is informed and has to confirm or not whether the goods seized are authentic or not.
Once the owner or its representative has ascertained the goods as counterfeited, a counterfeiting action can be introduced based on the evidence collected by the Customs. The deadline to introduce this action varies from one country to the other. The above summary is based on the experience of Inlex IP Expertise in assisting its clients while setting up the Customs process in the European Union and in numerous countries around the world.