Pre-recorded at INTA's 2018 Annual Meeting. 

Balancing the economic benefit of FTZs with their vulnerability to exploitation by counterfeiters remains an ongoing struggle, particularly for brand owners and IP professionals. Counterfeiters find workarounds to avoid detection. For example, some counterfeiters ship only the manufactured parts to the free trade zone, and within the free trade zone, they then attach the brand owner’s mark to the substandard goods, and repackage, or re-label the counterfeit products. Counterfeiters create sophisticated and multi-tiered transit routes for their infringing products in order to disguise the country of origin and true destination by purposely passing through ports that lack sufficient border controls, due to lack of funding, manpower, etc. This panel will discuss what brand owners and intermediaries need to do to help customs officials identify and stop counterfeit goods in FTZ and will highlight  best practices to successfully stop the manufacture and storage of counterfeit products.