On 8 July 2019, Order of the Federal Customs Service (FCS) No. 131 dated 28 January 2019 became effective. The foregoing order approved new Administrative Regulation of the FCS associated with provision of a state service on maintenance of the customs register of intellectual property (CRIP).

The main novelty of the new Administrative Regulation is the possibility to maintain the CRIP in the electronic format which is aimed to simplify and facilitate interaction between the rightholders and customs bodies significantly.

In that regard, on July 25, 2019 a meeting in the Federal Customs Service (FCS) dedicated to the administering registrations in the Customs Register of Intellectual Property (CRIP) in the electronic format was held. DLA Piper lawyers participated in the meeting and would like to share with you the discussed issues.

  • Now there are two options for filing applications seeking inclusion in the CRIP, prolongation of registration or other legal actions connected with administering CRIP registrations exist: either through a personal account of an international trade actor (PA), or through the Public Services portal.
  • Access to PA can be gained both by the rightholders themselves and by their representatives who, in fact, maintain the CRIP. To do so, a rightholder or their representative should receive from the FCS an enhanced certified electronic signature. That said, it is possible to receive related electronic signatures for employees of the rightholder or their representative who will be able to sign, subsequently, documents in PA on behalf of the employer.

    At the moment registration at PA is available for Russian companies only (for both rightholders and their representatives). As things stand now, for the full operation of the rightholder's representative through PA he should match the following requirements:

    • be a Russian legal entity and at the same time he should; and
    • have a power of attorney from the rightholder issued to the company, not to its individual employees.
    The meeting attendees noted that such a requirement to the power of attorney would close the opportunity to immediately commence using PA by the overwhelming majority of representatives providing CRIP maintenance services, as they mainly have powers of attorney issued to individual employees rather than to the company in general.
  • Though, FCS enthusiastically develops PA for using it fully while administrating the CRIP. In particular, exchange of documents in the electronic format with customs control stations, verifications of import consents provided by importers are to be introduced. The FCS is interested in further developing PA.
  • Submitting documents in the CRIP via the Public Services portal is already possible as well, however the forms are not in line with the Administrative Regulation yet. This issue is promised to be solved in the nearest future. However documents are accepted in the available form too. Apparently, one should manage to submit all the necessary documents in the empty fields for additional documents.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.