News

Customs Office - Destruction procedure in Serbia

The Serbian Customs Office, the Department in charge of protection of Intellectual Property has started destroying goods infringing IP rights.

Subject to destruction are the goods considered to be infringing IP Rights. These are the goods seized by the Customs Office that have a court decision final in law stating that the goods are infringing IP Rights or goods for which the importer has given a signed statement that the goods are infringing IP Rights.

Until recently, goods have not been destroyed due to a long and expensive procedure of acquiring administrative permits put in place by the Customs Law and internal regulations. However, after the Customs Office has realized that this administrative procedure is not efficient it has resorted to a new interpretation of the Customs Law.

The new approach of the Customs Office in Serbia is to treat seized goods with the a statement from the importer or with a court decision final in law as waist in accordance to the Law on waist materials (Official Gazette no. 25/96 & no. 101/05) which has been recently replaced by the Law on management of waist which entered into force May 23, 2009 (Official Gazette no. 36/09).

According to the new interpretation, the goods can be destroyed as soon as an agreement about the time of destruction and about covering the costs of the destruction has been reached with the City Authority for waist management. This city authority can be contacted by the infringer or by the IP Rights holder. Once the date for the destruction has been set and the costs covered the Customs Office would release the seized goods and supervise the destructions procedure itself.

This system of destruction has been in place for a couple of months and so far there have been no complaints from the IP Rights holders.

Mara Jankovic mara.jankovic@mjb.rs MIKIJELJ JANKOVIC & BOGDANOVIC