The highest court in the EU (the CJEU) has made an
interesting ruling — that the owner of a trade mark is
entitled to prevent a third party from debranding its goods without
consent in an EU customs warehouse, before applying a different
mark and importing them into the European Economic Area
(EEA).
What does this mean?
EU customs
warehousing allows non-EU goods to be stored within the customs
territory of the EU without being subject to import duties.
Generally, the system is used to allow goods to smoothly transit
through the EU for sale in non-EU countries. In this case,
involving Mitsubishi forklift trucks, two importers were taking
advantage of the system. They were bringing goods into a customs
warehouse and then replacing Mitsubishi's branding with their
own, before modifying the trucks to make them compliant with EU
standards.
