Stopping Counterfeits at the Border: Recording Your Mark with CBP
By Casey Scott McKay ·
Recording a federally registered trademark with U.S. Customs and Border Protection turns the government into a standing partner that intercepts counterfeit and infringing goods at the port before they ever reach an American buyer. This guide explains the statutory engine behind border enforcement, Section 526 of the Tariff Act (19 U.S.C. 1526) and Section 42 of the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. 1124), and why a Principal Register registration is the non-negotiable ticket of admission. It walks step by step through CBP's electronic IPRR recordation system, the modest per-class fee, and the detention, seizure, forfeiture, and destruction that follow at the border. It draws the all-important line between counterfeit marks and merely confusingly similar ones, and untangles the gray-market puzzle through K Mart v. Cartier, the common-control exception, and the Lever rule for materially different goods. It shows how a strong product identification guide makes officers effective, sets realistic expectations about de minimis parcels and the e-commerce flood, and situates recordation inside a layered program of litigation, ITC Section 337 actions, copyright recordation, and online enforcement. A worked example ties the whole framework together for a brand fighting fakes.
Intellectual Property -> Trademark | Published 28 June 2026 | rightsy.io
A Wall You Don't Have to Build Yourself
Every counterfeit you have ever worried about had to cross a line to reach your customer. Fakes are made somewhere, and most of the ones that flood the American market are made somewhere else, which means that at some point a container, a pallet, or a padded envelope had to enter the United States through a port of entry. There are well over three hundred of those ports, scattered from the Port of Los Angeles to a mail-sorting facility outside Cincinnati, and every one of them is staffed by a single federal agency: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP.
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