American Expatriate Costa Rica

Customs hold shoes for alleged counterfeiting

About three tonnes of shoes from China were hold in a joint operation between the Customs Inspection Bureau and Caldera Customs, in the face of the alleged falsification of a well-known international brand.

The finding was discovered when officials of the Inspection Body and Customs reviewed 10,200 pairs of shoes weighing approximately 3,149 kg, with similar characteristics to the footwear brand registered in the country.

The process of review had the collaboration of the representative of the brand, who issued expert judgment that leads to assume that the merchandise is violating the brand that they represent in Costa Rica.

On this subject, the Director General of Customs, Wilson Céspedes, indicated that the enforcement of intellectual property rights is a pillar of great importance for the National Customs Service. Therefore, in recent years, efforts have been made to reinforce knowledge and control through participation in international operations, such as Operation Maya and Operation Pangea, diagnosis by the World Customs Organization (WCO) of the rules and actions of the SNA on intellectual property, and access to the WCO’s IPM database, which contains protected trademark registrations, which serves as a reference on the characteristics of the original trademarks, among other actions.

The counterfeit goods are now in the hands of the Public Ministry.

crhoy.com