Polo v Dwidua Langgeng Pratama International Freight Forwarders

Date

6 April 2000

Legislation

Council Regulation 3295/94 laying down measures to prohibit the release for free circulation, export, re-export, or entry for a suspensive procedure of counterfeit and pirated goods

Keywords

Trade Marks; Counterfeiting; Member States; Goods in Transit; Customs

Solicitors:

Not Specified

Judge:

L Sevon (President)

Court:

European Court of Justice (First Chamber) (ECJ 1st Chamber)

Reported:

[2000] E.C.R. I-2519, [2000] E.T.M.R. 535

Summary

Article 1 of Council Regulation 3295/94 states:

"This Regulation shall lay down:

(a) the conditions under which the customs authorities shall take action where goods suspected of being counterfeit or pirated are:

entered for free circulation, export or re-export, found when checks are made on goods placed under a suspensive procedure within the meaning of Article 84(1)(a) of Council Regulation (EEC) No 2913/92 of 12 October 1992 establishing the Community Customs Code, or re-exported subject to notification…"

Polo owned several well-known word and device trade marks which were registered in Austria. Polo requested that the Austrian Customs seize a consignment of T-shirts bearing its word and device marks which were being transported from Indonesia en route to Poland by Dwidua - as a result 633 T-Shirts were detained in a customs warehouse.

Polo applied to the Landesgericht (Austrian regional court) for an order prohibiting Dwidua from marketing goods bearing its trade marks and also for an order permitting Polo to destroy the T-Shirts. The issue finally reached the Austrian Supreme Court who made a reference to the ECJ asking whether Article 1 of Regulation 3295/94, allowing customs authorities of member states to impound suspected counterfeit goods, applied to goods in transit moving through Community territory from one non Member State to another non Member State.

Decision

• Article 1 of Regulation 3295/94 applied where goods imported from a non-Member State to another non-Member State are, in the course of transit to their destination, temporarily detained in a Member State by Customs authorities on the basis of the Regulation and at the request of a company which holds rights which it claims to have been infringed by those goods and whose registered office is a non Member State.

Note: this case was decided before Poland joined the European Union.