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Recording Your Trademark With U.S. Customs: The $190 Step That Stops Knockoffs at the Port

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If your goods come in through a port and your brand is big enough to copy, yes, record the registration with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It costs $190 per class, it needs a live federal registration (an application won't do), and it lets CBP detain and seize imported goods that carry your mark without your permission. For a brand scaling up a production run, it's the cheapest enforcement you'll ever buy.

Here's what recordation does, what it doesn't, and where it fits.

What recordation is

The USPTO registers your trademark. CBP enforces it at the border, but only if it knows about it. Recordation is how you tell CBP. Under 19 C.F.R. Part 133, trademarks registered by the USPTO may be recorded with CBP, "except those registered on the supplemental register," and only "if the registration is current." So the Supplemental Register doesn't qualify, and a pending application doesn't either. The registration has to issue first.

Once recorded, the mark goes into CBP's system, and the officers who examine shipments can match goods against it. CBP's own page puts the result plainly: it can "detain, seize, forfeit, and ultimately destroy merchandise" that infringes a recorded mark.

What it costs

CBP's page says "the fee for e-Recordation is $190 per International Class of Goods." The regulation says the same thing: "$190 for each class for which the applicant desires to record the trademark," with the example of a mark registered in three classes costing $570. So a bottle brand recorded in one class pays $190. A brand with goods in three classes pays $570 to cover all of them.

The recordation "shall remain in force concurrently with the 20-year current registration period," and it's canceled "if the trademark registration is finally canceled or revoked." When you renew the registration with the USPTO, you renew the recordation with CBP for $80 per class. The renewal application is due "not later than 3 months after the date of expiration" of the registration period, and missing it "shall deprive the trademark owner of the renewal process." Put the date on the same calendar as your USPTO renewal.

What CBP does when it finds something

The regulations split the goods CBP stops into two groups.

Goods bearing a counterfeit mark, meaning a copy that's effectively identical to your recorded mark, get the hard treatment. CBP "will seize such merchandise and, in the absence of the written consent of the owner of the recorded mark, forfeit the seized merchandise." You, as the owner, get told. CBP "will disclose to the owner of the recorded mark" the importation information "within 30 business days" of the seizure. You can also consent to the release within thirty days of the notice, which you'd do, for instance, if the shipment turns out to be your own licensee's.

Goods bearing a mark that copies or simulates yours, close enough that the public is "likely to associate" it with your mark but not an outright counterfeit, are detained rather than seized outright. They "shall be detained for 30 days from the date on which the goods are presented for Customs examination," the importer is notified within five days of the decision, and CBP may share importation information with you so you can weigh in. What happens next depends on whether the importer can show the goods are allowed in, so this is where your attorney and the monitoring file earn their keep.

What CBP doesn't do

Two things people expect from recordation that it doesn't provide.

It doesn't search for infringers. CBP examines shipments at the border. It doesn't scan marketplaces, review new USPTO filings or send cease and desist letters. The article on policing your trademark covers what that work looks like, and the monitoring page explains how we watch new filings for you.

It doesn't know your product unless you teach it. CBP's best practices page asks recorded rights holders to "submit a Product Identification Guide" so officers can tell your real goods from fakes, and it offers to let recordation holders "deliver live online training to CBP personnel." When CBP has a question about a shipment, it may send you images and ask you to "provide a list of the physical characteristics of the imported product" that supports your answer, and it asks for a response "within 24 hours." If you're recording a mark, plan to spend an afternoon on the guide: the security tag, the stitching, the batch code, whatever makes a real Tidewater Grove bottle different from a fake one. (Tidewater Grove is invented for this article.) CBP also runs an e-Allegations portal where you can report parties "suspected of importing merchandise that violates your IP."

Who should bother

Not every brand needs this, and I'd rather you spend $190 where it works. Recordation pays off when three things are true: your goods are physically imported, your product is easy to copy and worth copying, and you're about to put enough volume into the market that counterfeiters will notice. A brand placing its first big overseas run, or getting its first chain retail order, is exactly there. A local service business with no goods crossing a border isn't.

If you sell on Amazon, recordation sits alongside, not instead of, Brand Registry. The Amazon Brand Registry article covers the marketplace side. Customs covers the port.

Where it fits in the order of operations

Recordation is the last step in a sequence that starts long before the registration issues. Clear the name. File it in your company's name, in the classes you'll ship. Lock the packaging. Get the registration. Then record it with CBP, build the product identification guide, and set up monitoring for new filings and marketplace copies. The article on filing before a production run covers the front end of that sequence.

The timing matters because recordation can't be done early. If a copy shows up at the port while your application is still pending, CBP has nothing to act on. That's one more reason to file the application the moment the name is cleared, rather than after the first run sells out.

Recording with CBP isn't part of Seed or Grove. If you'd like us to handle the recordation and the product guide once your registration issues, email and we'll quote it as a flat fee.

Seed is a $650 clearance search with a written opinion. Grove is $2,600: the search, the opinion and the federal application, with procedural Office Actions included. USPTO fees are separate, $350 per class.

Questions about your name? Email us at hello@citrus.legal, or book a paid 30-minute consultation (opens in a new tab) for advice on your specific situation.

Sources

This article is general information, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.

When you are ready to own it

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The search, the written opinion, the federal application and procedural Office Actions, for $2,600 or three payments of $950. Nothing is filed until you approve the search. If I call your mark low risk and the USPTO refuses it, I file again at no attorney fee.

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