Regulations governing export commodities amended to simplify export procedures and removal of trademark export monitoring system.

To simplify the export procedures, the Draft Amendments to “Regulations Governing Export Commodities” promulgated by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) incorporate that for commodities other than those identified in the “List of Restricted Export Commodities” may be exempted from certification.  Meanwhile, considering few recordation of registered trademarks have been made since the trademark export monitoring system was enforced in 1994, and Directorate General of Customs, Ministry of Finance (MOF) and Intellectual Property Office, MOEA would not accept the recordation of registered trademarks made by trademark owners or their agents after the establishment of the effective alternative measures, namely, border control, to stop the export of infringing commodities, Articles 13 and 14 of the said Regulations are deleted.

To operate in coordination with subparagraph 3 of Article 17 of Foreign Trade Act, as added, providing that exporters/importers shall not fail to declare the source identification code as required, paragraph 2 of Article 18 of said Regulations adds that exporters shall declare the source identification code.  Further, in consideration of feasibility of the custom offices’ practicing the business, the Regulations will provide upon said Amendments that exporters shall declare the correct IFPI and business code in the export declaration, as provided in paragraph 20 of Enforcement Guidelines for Optical Media Management Matters & Investigation Procedures.  Notwithstanding, as the optical media reproduced by a CD burner would not bear the source identification code, the Regulations also provide that even if there is no source identification code available, exporters shall still expressly declare “no source identification code” in the export declaration.

Upon said Amendments, the Regulations will also be renamed as “Commodities Export Regulations”.  The other highlights of the Amendments are specified as following:
1. Supervision of the commodities which contain copyright license documents shall be implemented by the Intellectual Property Office, MOEA (Article 2 of the Amendments).
2. Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) shall prepare the list of restricted export commodities for endangered animals and plants and products thereof (Article 5 of the Amendments).
3. To simplify the export procedures, the government authorities, public enterprises and public/private schools may export the commodities other those identified in the List of Restricted Export Commodities free from certification (Articles 6 and 7 of the Amendments).
4. To deal with the removal of the trademark export monitoring system1, Article 13 and Article 14 of the existing provisions are deleted.
5. To operate in coordination with the amendment to the subparagraph 3 of Article 17 of Foreign Trade Act, the Regulations include that exporters shall declare the source identification code when exporting the commodities designated in a public notice (Article 18 of the Amendments).

*Footnote:

According to Article 13 of the Regulations Governing Export Commodities, to perform the special monitoring of the trademarks marked on the exported commodities, BOFT shall set up a trademark export monitoring system to accept the requests of recordation of registered trademarks made by the trademark owners or their agents and collect the registration fee.

Article 14 of the same Regulations provides that if the Customs finds that the exported commodities themselves or their inner or outer packages or containers bear a trademark or any characters/words, logos, marks, colors or combinations thereof which constitute some trademark in appearance that are identical with or similar to a recorded registered trademark and belong to the same commodity group by checking through the trademark export monitoring system, the following measures shall be taken:
1. Where such markings are identical with a recorded registered trademark and the exporter is not on the trademark owner's list of manufacturers/companies permitted to use the registered trademark, the Customs shall request the exporter to provide the legal documents from the trademark owner designating or licensing the exporter to use the recorded registered trademark, or other documents sufficient to support that no trademark counterfeiting has been involved, so that the Customs can verify and release the commodities accordingly.
2. Where such markings are similar to a recorded trademark, the Customs may, depending on whether the similarity is likely to cause confusion, apply the requirements referred to in the preceding subparagraph.  (2010.06)
/DC