Border Seizures

Practice Areas

• Please select
• Alternative Dispute Resolution
• Border Seizures
• Copyright
• Designs
• Distribution
• Employee Invention Law
• IT
• Litigation
• Media
• Pharmaceutical Law
• Protection of Business and Trade Secrets
• Trademarks – Prosecution
• Trademarks – Litigation
• Transactional IP
• Unfair Competition Law

For most rights owners, border seizures are an almost indispensable and cost-efficient means to effectively fight counterfeit goods and illegal grey market imports. Applications to the competent customs authorities serve the purpose of stopping the importation and exportation of counterfeit goods at the external frontier of the European Community or Germany. In many cases, the customs authorities assist in the destruction of such counterfeit goods. In addition, border seizures are an important way to gather evidence. They can be used to prepare or support the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the civil courts.

We advise and represent rights owners in all phases of the customs authority proceedings, starting with the filing of applications, continuing with the administration and annual extension of border seizure applications and the instruction of customs officers to recognize typical infringement cases. We also represent our clients continuously in all border seizures and subsequent civil law and criminal law proceedings and investigations.

We have firm and well-established contacts to the competent customs authorities in Germany, in particular in the port of Hamburg and in the international trade fair venues Düsseldorf and Frankfurt/Main and are well-positioned to coordinate customs proceedings on a European scale.