Israeli customs is holding a shipment of fakes of my brand. What do I have to do, and how fast?

Move immediately, because the clock in Section 200A of the Customs Ordinance is measured in days. Israeli customs may detain a shipment that appears on its face to infringe a registered trade mark, either on its own initiative or after a complaint, and it then notifies the proprietor of the registration. From that notice you have three days to deposit a guarantee in the amount customs fixes, and ten days to file a claim against the importer. Section 200A(c) explains what the guarantee is for: it secures the expenses of the seizure and compensation for any damage the seizure causes, which is a real risk where the goods turn out to be genuine parallel imports rather than fakes. If you do neither, customs releases the consignment and the goods enter the Israeli market.

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Detailed Answer

The threshold requirement is the one that most often defeats foreign brand owners, and it cannot be fixed after the telephone call from customs. Section 200A operates on a registered Israeli trade mark. A brand that is famous in Europe or North America but has never been filed at the Israel Patent Office has no border remedy under this provision, and reputation alone will not persuade customs to hold a container. Registration takes months, so the sequence has to be the other way round: register, then record your details so customs has a live contact when a suspicious consignment appears, then respond when the notice arrives. Brand owners who trade into Israel through a distributor should check whose name the Israeli registration stands in, because a distributor-owned mark puts the enforcement right in the distributor's hands and creates a separate problem when the relationship ends.

The deadlines assume you already have Israeli counsel, which is the practical point for a rights holder abroad. Three days from notice is not enough time to instruct a firm cold, obtain a bank guarantee from an Israeli bank or from a foreign bank in a form customs will accept, and settle its wording. The amounts are set case by case against the value and volume of the goods, and modest consignments have been secured with guarantees in the low thousands of shekels, with one reported detention of infringing footwear fixed at NIS 5,000. Larger commercial shipments attract considerably more. The claim that follows within ten days is an ordinary civil action against the importer, and extensions of a further ten working days are available in practice, but they are granted rather than assumed. Many detentions never reach judgment: once the importer sees a funded claimant with a registered mark and a guarantee in place, settlements involving consent to destruction and an undertaking not to repeat are common, which is usually a better commercial outcome than a judgment against a shell importer.

Two habits separate rights holders who use this well from those who lose consignments. The first is preparation of the evidence pack in advance: the registration certificate, a signed declaration explaining how genuine product is identified, photographs of authentic packaging, and the name of a person who can compare samples quickly. Customs will often send images and ask for a view within a day, and a brand that cannot answer that question quickly is a brand that will be told the goods are being released. The second is a standing instruction to Israeli counsel with authority to act on notice, because the three-day guarantee deadline runs whether or not your general counsel in Chicago has read the email. If you have not yet secured the underlying right, our answer on registering a trade mark in Israel as a non-resident covers the filing route, including the requirement for a local address for service.

In Practice: Border detention runs on Section 200A of the Customs Ordinance, which requires a registered Israeli trade mark, a guarantee deposited within 3 days of the customs notice, and a claim against the importer filed within 10 days, with Section 200A(c) directing the guarantee to the costs of seizure and any damage caused by it. Guarantee amounts are fixed by Israeli Customs case by case, with reported figures from around NIS 5,000 on small consignments upward. Failure at either deadline results in release of the goods, and the substantive claim then proceeds in the ordinary courts, where ad valorem court fees run at 2.5% of the sum claimed, half payable on filing.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• Your mark is not yet registered in Israel and a shipment has been detained, since the border remedy depends on registration and the immediate question becomes whether any other cause of action, such as passing off, can be deployed inside the deadline.
• The importer claims the goods are genuine parallel imports, where a wrongly maintained seizure exposes you to a damages claim secured against the very guarantee you deposited.
• The Israeli registration stands in the name of a current or former distributor, because the person entitled to act on the customs notice is the registered proprietor and that dispute has to be resolved before the ten days expire.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

An Israeli lawyer can hold a standing instruction to respond to a customs notice within the three-day window, arrange the guarantee, file the claim inside ten days, and negotiate destruction and undertakings with the importer instead of a long trial.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.