The customs register, which has been in force in Ukraine since 2002, is unlikely to be an argument for controllers who have planned to block Ukrainian parcels from abroad en masse.
The main purpose of the register is to combat infringement of intellectual property rights for commercial purposes. The owner of the trademark rights or his representative applies to the customs with an application for inclusion in the customs register.
If the customs sees that someone is moving goods with such a trademark across the border, it stops the registration of such goods for up to 10 days and notifies the owner of the rights to the trademark (right holder).
"The mechanism of suspension of customs clearance should not apply to goods that are moved across the border by citizens for personal use and are not intended for business activities, if their value does not exceed 500 euros and weight - 50 kg," - said UBR.ua partner law firm Bargen Svyatoslav Bartosz.
Even if the customs stops the registration of the parcel of an ordinary citizen, the maximum, which is fraught with a delay of up to 10 days. Such parcels are of no economic interest to the trademark owner.
After stopping customs clearance, the right holder can act according to three schemes:
- do nothing;
- allow to continue customs clearance;
- will apply to the court with a claim for protection of intellectual property rights and with a statement prohibiting customs clearance (statement on securing the claim).
“In the case of sending an ordinary citizen, the probability that the right holder will choose the first or second option is 99.9%. To go to court, you need to pay more than 2 thousand. UAH court fees, ”say lawyers.
Then you need to conduct a forensic examination, and this is also money. If we are talking about one pair of Nike sneakers (as in the scandalous example https://goo.gl/St5wvM) or a phone that someone bought in a foreign store, in which case only legal costs may exceed the value of the goods.
It is also necessary to take into account the prospects for resolving such a dispute.
“If a citizen has bought an original product abroad, which is sold in this country with the consent of the copyright holder, the Ukrainian representatives of the trademark owner have no right to prohibit its import. For example, if sneakers are bought in a Nike store in the UK, then Ukrainian representatives of TM cannot ban the import of such sneakers, ”Svyatoslav Bartosh explained.
The statistics only confirm that none of the right holders hinders the customs clearance of international parcels by ordinary citizens. There is not a single example in the unified state register of court decisions when the right holder applied for a ban on customs clearance to an ordinary person. Of course, if the package is not one pair of sneakers, but ten, the representatives of the right holder will most likely take measures to protect their rights and go to court.
The material is published on the website: UBR.ua
