Doing Business In Canada: Protecting Luxury Brands From Counterfeiting (Part 2)

This article is Part 2 of , a four-part series on the legal and practical issues luxury brands most often face when operating in or selling to Canada. Part 1 addressed the upstream question of legal and operational readiness. Part 2 turns to the border itself: the statutory framework, the operational mechanics of the Canada Border Services Agency (“CBSA”) Intellectual Property Rights (“IPR”) Program and the response planning a luxury brand should have in place before a detention occurs.

For luxury brands, Canada’s border is a critical early point of intervention against counterfeit goods and, in many cases, a commercially efficient way to prevent infringing products from entering the Canadian market. The Combating Counterfeit Products Act, in force since January 1, 2015, and subsequently amended, introduced a variety of additional statutory mechanisms to assist brand owners in the enforcement of their valuable intellectual property rights, including a regime that empowered the CBSA