Customs Seizes More Than 16 000 Counterfeit Goods
In The Eight Months Of This Year

Riga, Latvia — Today, on 14 October, a Memorandum of Cooperation was signed at the National Customs Board of the State Revenue Service with CIPR-REACT, an international non-governmental organization fighting counterfeits, and the first results were discussed.

This year, as compared with the previous years, the customs have confiscated significantly more counterfeit goods. It has become possible thanks to vigorous actions by customs authorities, as well as closer partnership between the customs and trademark owners, including the producers of original goods, which are represented in Latvia by the international organizations CIPR and REACT. The partnership was initiated in February this year and led to good results, therefore it was formalized today by signing a memorandum on cooperation.

"Although the amount of seized counterfeits has substantially increased on the Latvian customs border, the current project statistics do not reflect the real situation in the country. The flow of counterfeits across the EU customs borders is much larger. This is shown by, for example, the information summarized by the EC Justice and Home Affairs Directorate. The amount of counterfeits seized on the EU external borders has increased by 900% during the last four years. It must be acknowledged at the same time, that the amounts of counterfeit and pirated goods seized by the Latvian Customs are not large," explained CIPR representative Romans Baumanis.

As a result of an initiative by well-known trademark owners — the original producers, a joint project was launched in February this year between the CIPR and REACT organizations, represented in Latvia by "The PBN Company-Baltics". Under this project, information is sent to the National Customs Board about the more usual features of counterfeit products, and legal actions on behalf of the rights holders are initiated, thus helping the customs officers to react promptly in case of possible violations.

Practical seminars have also been organized for customs officers on counterfeit detection, as well as meetings with representatives of the original producers from such well-known companies as Nokia, Epson, Timberland, Harley Davidson, Lancaster, Ford, Nike, Reebok and many more. These seminars and meetings add to the knowledge of customs officers about the worldwide trends in counterfeiting and allow them to anticipate possible violations on the Latvian customs border.

"We are interested in helping the Latvian customs officers to carry out their duties when fighting counterfeits. Therefore, on behalf of REACT members, for the use by the customs, I am handing over digital cameras which are necessary for quick exchange of visual information, in order to find out whether the trademark owners’ rights have been violated, said Ronald W.M. Brohm, the Director of REACT.

During the project implementation, in cooperation with the customs, several large shipments have been seized, for example, with counterfeit sports footwear which were taken through Latvia to Russia. Several inspections have been carried out together with the Economic Police at different trading outlets. Altogether more than 24 000 counterfeit goods have been seized under this project.

"I appreciate this emerging cooperation and believe that the business community and state authorities must work together to reach effective results. I hope that this our common work will facilitate fair competition in the future and will be a crucial contribution to fighting counterfeiting of goods. The Latvian Customs Service is performing its duties with great sense of responsibility to prevent the movement of counterfeit products across the EU external border into the EU common market, but there is still much to be done in the area of consumer protection and improvement of the business environment," said Andis Drulle, the Director of the National Customs Board of the State Revenue Service.

As part of the cooperation project the customs have now been given free-of-charge access to the REACT data base which contains a catalogue of protected trademarks and contact data of rights holders or their representatives, as well as additional information about the current global trends in trademark violations.

"The funding for the Latvian CIPR-REACT project is provided in equal shares by SNB REACT and the international organization Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights or CIPR. In Latvia, this project is implemented by The PBN Company. While representing CIPR in the Baltic States, we have accumulated significant experience in cooperation with state authorities," said Romans Baumanis, the Vice President and Managing Director of The PBN Company. "We hope to fully implement this project first in Latvia and then to develop it also in Lithuania and Estonia. We have already had the first successful cooperation with the customs of the neighboring countries, therefore we are optimistic about future prospects, which should be specified in more details in the next coming months."

The mission of CIPR (www.cipr.org) is to advance intellectual property rights protection by facilitating partnership between state authorities and the private sector.

CIPR represents such world-famous trademark owners as, for example, Anheuser-Busch, British American Tobacco, Coca-Cola, Dell Computer, Diageo, Gallaher, Guinness UDV, Intel, JTI, Kraft Foods, Microsoft, Nokia, Pfizer, Philip Morris, Tiffany, etc.

The mission of SNB REACT (www.snbreact.org) is to fight the flow of counterfeits by providing enforcement assistance to Customs and Police authorities on behalf of the trademark owners.

The members of REACT include Adidas, Bosch, Canon, Ferrari, Nike, Nokia, Mercedes Benz, etc., and many more, the full list of its 115 members can be obtained on the home page.