MIAMI: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at Miami International Airport (MIA) seized 720 pieces of piratical jewelry with a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of over $6 million on June 16. The piratical jewelry arrived in a shipment from Hong Kong and bore the non-genuine Van Cleef & Arpels copyrighted design.
CBP officers selected the shipment for inspection and immediately noticed that the merchandise was imitation jewelry that bore a false, non-genuine copyright clearly piratical to the federally recorded copyright.
CBP import specialists recommended seizing the merchandise and estimated the MSRP to be valued at over $6 million.
“The result of this seizure is another perfect example of the exceptionally skillful CBP officers and CBP import specialists at our ports of entry,” said Miami International Airport Port Director Christopher Maston. “When property rights are violated, American jobs are lost, business profits are stolen and consumers are put at risk from poor quality or unsafe products.”
On a typical day in Fiscal Year 2014, CBP OFO officers around the country seized counterfeit goods totaling more than $3.4 million. In Fiscal Year 2014, CBP made more than 23,000 seizures of counterfeit goods worth an estimated $1.2 billion. For additional statistics and a list of the most popular counterfeit items and their worth view the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) 2014 report.
CBP targets and seizes imports of counterfeit and pirated goods, and enforces exclusion orders on patent-infringing and other IPR violative goods.
