Measures of the Customs Administration of the Republic of Macedonia for the Protection of the Intellectual Property Rights as Part of the Contemporary Trends in Customs

摘要

Violation of intellectual property rights as a social phenomenon poses a serious threat to the survival and development of each county. The experiences speak of the fact that no country or region remains beyond the reach of this phenomenon, nor it is immune to this danger, which indicates that this is a problem of global proportions. As a result, each country builds national strategies and develops different forms and mechanisms to effectively combat this problem. Unlike countries with a traditional system of Parliamentary democracy faced with the need to build and upgrade the already established strategy, developing countries such as Macedonia, have to start building such a strategy simultaneously with the implementation of the overall development processes and the establishment of the overall laws of the state. Thanks to the organizational structure of the Customs Administration of the Republic of Macedonia on the country's borders and the knowledge of international trade flows, it provides a substantial role in the protection of the Macedonian economy from goods that infringe on the intellectual property rights. The Customs measures for protection of the intellectual property rights represent one of the non tariff (non fiscal) measures applied during the regular customs procedures, pursuant to the Law on Customs Administration and the Customs Law. However, it should be pointed out that although the trade with falsified and pirated goods, as a derivative form of the international trade, exists as long as the trade itself exists, nonetheless, in the Customs system of the Republic of Macedonia the Customs measures to combat this sort of trade have been put into effect only recently. The customs measures to protect intellectual property rights were defined in 2005 for the first time by passing the Law on Customs Measures for Protection of Intellectual Property Rights.