Customs Surveillance

Customs Surveillance and Seizure Service

Our firm assists clients in applying for customs surveillance and intervention activities. An application for customs authority intervention for goods suspected of infringing intellectual property rights may be filed both at national level and at EU level.

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During the seizure and detention phases of intercepted goods, our professionals may intervene to assist customs officers in assessing counterfeiting.

Customs Surveillance and Seizures

On 29 June 2013, Regulation No. 608/2013 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights by customs authorities was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The new regulation introduces targeted changes to provide more effective protection to intellectual property right holders, to the benefit of consumers, who will receive reliable, high-quality products. In particular, the new regulation:

  • broadens the list of protectable intellectual property rights: customs authorities will be able to intervene also in the presence of violations relating to protected trade names, topographies of semiconductor products, utility models, and devices designed, produced, or adapted with the aim of making it possible or easier to circumvent technological measures;
  • establishes a central database for collecting all decisions relating to the acceptance, extension, or suspension of applications for intervention.
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The intellectual property rights protected under EU Regulation No. 608/2013 are:

  • Trade marks;
  • Designs and models;
  • Copyright and neighbouring rights;
  • Geographical indications;
  • Patents;
  • Supplementary protection certificates for medicinal products and plant protection products;
  • Plant variety rights;
  • Topographies of semiconductor products;
  • Utility models (new, introduced by the new regulation);
  • Trade names (new, introduced by the new regulation).

Customs intervention under Regulation No. 608/2013 is provided for:

  • goods declared for release for free circulation, export, or re-export;
  • goods entering or leaving the customs territory of the Union;
  • goods placed under a suspensive procedure or placed in a free zone or free warehouse.

Excluded from the scope of Regulation No. 608/2013 are:

  • goods released for free circulation under the end-use procedure;
  • goods contained in travellers' personal luggage, provided they are of a non-commercial nature;
  • goods manufactured with the consent of the right holder and those whose manufacture is carried out by a person duly authorised by a right holder to produce a certain quantity, but which are produced in excess of the quantity agreed between that person and the right holder – these fall within the so-called "parallel trade" (Recital 6), i.e. intellectual property rights for which the "exhaustion of rights" has not occurred, and the so-called overruns or surpluses – Art. 1.5.

This refers to a postal or express courier consignment comprising up to three units or having a gross weight of less than 2 kg. For the purposes of the regulation, a "unit", if unpackaged, means goods classified under the Combined Nomenclature in Annex I to Council Regulation (EEC) No. 2658/87 of 23 July 1987, or, if packaged, the packaging of such goods intended to be sold at retail to the final consumer. The procedure requires the applicant to make an explicit request in the application for action (box 10 of the form) and to agree to bear the costs of destruction of the goods.

Destruction of goods subject to small consignments suspected of being counterfeit or pirated, under the conditions provided for in Arts. 25 and 26, may only take place for counterfeit and pirated goods, non-perishable and covered by a decision granting an application for action.

This procedure is incompatible with the national criminal procedure system, which does not allow the immediate destruction of goods before the judicial authority has established the offence.

The application for intervention under this procedure filed with customs authorities after notification of the suspension of release or detention of goods may only be national and must be filed within 4 working days of the notification of the suspension or detention. The procedure is not available for perishable goods.

From 1 January 2014, member states were required to enter – in electronic format – all information contained in the applications submitted to the competent customs services into the new central COPIS database. The data – except for those marked as "confidential" by the right holder – are automatically transmitted to all member states and to the Commission.