Pursuant to the provisions of Article 7 of the new Law on Intellectual Property Rights Border Measures (Law No. 17 of 2011) which came into force in Qatar, in January 2011, trademarks customs recordal will soon be implemented. Article 7 of the new Law stipulates the following:
Article (7): “The right holder may submit an application with the Department requesting registration of all data related to its rights, and its address in the State, in a registry specific for this purpose at the Department, and the Minister will issue a decision on the registration procedures and fees upon a proposal by the Director General of the Department”.
In other words, the rights holders are now allowed to “record” all relevant information related to their marks. This will definitely mean that, with a recordation system in place, Customs will be allowed to adopt an ex-officio border system, whereby they can immediately target, intercept and confiscate shipments of infringing goods and thus avoiding the delays inherently involved in seeking judicial action. Therefore, products suspected of being counterfeit will be suspended and the rights owner as well as the importer will be immediately notified.
The filing requirements for the recordal and the recordal period have not been announced yet. We will keep you updated in due course.
By way of background, the countries of our region which offer customs recordal are: Cyprus, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and the UAE (Dubai, Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah).
Should you have any specific inquiries regarding the subject matter, please contact us at info@sabaip.com