Anti-piracy measures in Panama apply to brands registered in the Republic of Panama and are effective when the brands are registered both in the Customs Office and the Industrial Property Authority.
Your rights can be defended in two fronts:
- Filing a report against a company which is considered to be violating intellectual property laws on industrial property, author rights and related rights.
- Defending your brand in case a competitor files a report against you or in case of an inspection from the Customs Office.
These regulations are recent, starting October 2015. Then, Panama introduced changes in regulations for the purpose of fighting the piracy of licenses, brands and author’s rights.
Following the most recent decree, the National Customs Authority has power to inspect and/or hold back, in all of the national territory, merchandise in transit under Customs inspection that may be violating rights over industrial property, author’s rights and other related rights. The National Customs Authority can do this either after a report is filed or at random.
To perform the aformentioned inspections some factors are taken into account, such as:
- Goods of companies that appear in the list of alleged counterfeiters. The list is supplied by the owners of the affected rights or their registrated representatives.
- Merchandise imported by companies that have been convicted of counterfeits in the past.
The National Customs Authority can also perform inspections under the suspicion that the merchandise in transit may violate intellectual property rights with the purpose to alert the Customs Authority of the destination country.
In case of inspection, the National Customs Office is obliged to send a notification to the proprietary of the protected rights, through a lawyer or a law irm that is correctly registered with the National Customs Office.f a company that feels that their rights are being violated, it should contact a lawyer or a law firm, which are the first to be contacted by the Customs Office when a container is being held back.
The solution is in Coronell, Lam and Associates. We offer you a special package of the two necessary registries, so you can count with the adequate protection. Just contact us! We’re here to serve you!
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