Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement Manual - Ipr-policy.eu

limited; therefore, for them to consider that your counterfeiting problem warrants enforcement
action, you will need to provide as much information as possible. No information is too trivial.
Moreover, you must be prepared to respond quickly when contacted and provide all of the
information that you have compiled about your counterfeiting problem. It is pivotal to your success
in working with CBP that you designate a central point of contact, whether an individual or a team
of individuals, that CBP can work with to deal with your counterfeiting problem. The best way to
maximize CBP’s help is to make it easy for CBP to contact and interact with you. This will contribute
to the success of the partnership you want to develop.
In addition, you can make CBP’s job easier by providing it with tools, including a dedicated phone
line and fax line to reach you; a dedicated e-mail address; a secure Web page that it can log on
to check information; and a reference manual that contains information that it can use to verify
authenticity of your trademarks.
CBP Officers Training
Regardless of the other tools you put in place, there is no substitute for one-on-one training. As an
intellectual property rights owner, you should offer to conduct product identification seminars at
CBP ports and field offices throughout the country. The more ports that you reach out to, the more
awareness you will raise about your company and its IP, and the more likely that you will receive
enforcement action from CBP.
The training seminars that you conduct should be complemented with the distribution of product
identification manuals, security feature identifiers, etc., that will make CBP’s job of recognizing
counterfeit trademarks easier. These tools should be clear, concise, and easy to use. Confusing
guidance documents or difficult-to-use equipment to identify the authenticity of trademarks can
deter or diminish enforcement.
Inquiries Regarding Suspect Goods
When CBP calls to report that it has detained a product with a trademark that looks like yours
but is a suspected counterfeit, you must be prepared to respond. You must also be absolutely and
unequivocally certain that the detained product is either legitimate or a counterfeit. You cannot afford
to make a mistake and tell CBP that a trademark is counterfeit if you are not 100% sure. Someone
has paid for the shipment and may have purchased it in good faith. The product may, in fact, be
authentic. If you tell CBP that it is a counterfeit, and CBP seizes it only to find out later that the
marking is genuine, the consequences could be unfavorable. You have opened the door for a potential
lawsuit from the importer of the goods and have severely damaged your credibility with CBP.
With strict supply chain control procedures in place, the call should be easier to make. If you can
identify the goods as counterfeit with certainty, put the reasons why the product is counterfeit into a
letter on company letterhead and send it to CBP.
Page 18