Italian Customs Focuses On Patents

Italian Customs has recently implemented a number of improvements that, if properly exploited, may be helpful in rendering Customs surveillance more effective, particularly in the enforcement of patent rights.

Statistics show that Customs officers are mainly involved with border detentions of copies of famous brands (eg, in the fashion industry), that are easy to recognise, whereas more hardly are put in the condition to efficiently detect goods infringing patent rights, whose identification requires adequate preparation and technical information. Although the application submitted by rights holders to the Italian Central Customs Agency is accompanied with all information required to identify relevant goods, in practice said information may not always be available to local officers at the Customs peripheral units who are engaged in the daily controls of imported goods.

The Italian Central Customs Agency has implemented a state-of-the-art multimedia database called FALSTAFF, which is integrated with the Italian Customs IT system, AIDA, to store information on goods suspected of infringing IP rights. This database is interactive and can be directly updated by rights holders that have applied for Customs measures (or their local counsels / representatives). The rights holder generates a form in the database and inputs all technical information and details to identify products suspected of infringement. FALSTAFF should also allow Customs officers real-time screening of all import and export declarations...