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In Memory of
Robert Podwil
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U.S. Customs
Recordation Services
The
U.S. Customs Service of the United States Department of the Treasury, can and
will protect your intellectual property rights with an owner's authorization
only. To obtain this protection, active Patents, Trademark registrations,
Copyright registrations, Mask Works and Trade Secrets must be registered with
the to the U.S. International Trade Commission. The
action which the Customs Service can
take to help protect intellectual property depends on the type of intellectual
property involved.
Patents
While
Customs can assist patent owners in attempting to determine if imports of
infringing goods are taking place. Customs will survey imports and advise the
patent owner of the names and addresses of importers whose goods appear to
infringe the patent.
Customs
charges a fee for this service,
which may be of 2, 4, or 6 months' duration. Patent owners often use the
results of Customs patent surveys as evidence for the International
Trade Commission to begin exclusion order proceedings. The information may
also be used in developing a patent infringement lawsuit.
Trademarks,
Copyrights and Trade Names
Owners
of registered trademarks, of
registered copyrights, and of trade names can record these rights with the
Customs Service. Recordation is relatively inexpensive, and subjects imports
of infringing items to seizure and forfeiture as prescribed by the Customs
Regulations.
Mask Works
The
only protection Customs can give a mask
work is by means of an ITC exclusion order or court order directing denial of
entry of infringing items.
According
to the Copyright Law, Section 901 (2):
"a
"mask work" is a series of related images, however fixed or encoded-
(A)
having or representing the predetermined, three-dimensional pattern of
metallic, insulating, or semiconductor material present or removed from the
layers of a semiconductor chip product; and
(B)
in which series the relation of the images to one another is that each image
has the pattern of the surface of one form of the semiconductor chip
product."
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