AIPLA-IPO Joint Letter to Senate Judiciary Committee in Support of Counterfeit Goods Seizure Act

The American Intellectual Property Law Association submitted a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the Counterfeit Goods Seizure Act of 2019.

In addition to the economic harm to design patent owners, knockoff and counterfeit designs harm the public. Products incorporating knockoff and counterfeit designs are often not manufactured to the same quality and safety standards as a genuine product, posing usability problems and safety risks to the unsuspecting consumer. Currently, CBP has the authority to detect and seize only goods that infringe trademark, trade dress, and copyright rights, but not design patents. For design patents, CBP’s authority is currently limited to enforcing exclusion orders issued by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), which are rare and expensive to obtain.

We support this legislation because it makes the straightforward change required to adapt CBP’s existing enforcement mechanisms and tools to include the enforcement of design patents. The current trademark and copyright recordation system could be readily extended to permit the recordation of design patents and provide CBP field officers with instantaneous access to information about each protected right.