Import

Alan Becker, Board member of Enterprise and Chair of Beacon Council, with Gov Scott meets with business leaders in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Managing Shareholder Alan Becker, our guest blogger, who just returned from the Enterprise Florida Trade Mission to Brazil with Governor Rick Scott and a delegation of Florida business leaders. Alan is the Chair of the Beacon Council, MIami Dade County’s Economic Development agency.

Alan S. Becker

Brazil was the # 1 trading partner for the Miami Customs district in 2010 and has been the top  trading partner for more than a decade. It is Florida’s # 1 trade partner with over $15 billion in  annual trade. Of that, $13 billion is export to Brazil, so there is a lot of room for increased trade  importing to Florida.

Many of the largest Brazilian companies already have regional or US headquarters in Miami, such  as Odebrecht, Itau Bank, TAM Airlines, and many others.

Miami – Dade County is the area where most of this trade takes place, which is not surprising. Of Dade’s 2.5 million residents, half are foreign born and 2/3 speak a second language in addition to English, almost all from the Caribbean, Central and South American. There are at least 50,000 Brazilians living in South Florida.

In 2010, 555,000 visitors came from Brazil just to Miami-Dade County and […]

Michael De Biase

Among its other duties, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) has the daunting task and      responsibility to search and seize products that are counterfeit or otherwise infringe the  intellectual property rights of original goods manufacturers. This is accomplished through CBP’s  Intellectual Property Rights Recordation System. As the name suggests, trademark and copyright  owners record their intellectual property rights with CBP and CBP keeps records of such  recordings via this system, which can be accessed online at http://iprs.cbp.gov/. Using this  system, an importer can determine if any of the products that it is importing actually violate the  intellectual property rights of somebody else. However, there is a big problem with this system  that can cause CBP to wrongfully seize goods, thereby inflicting substantial monetary damages  and significant delays in delivery times.Intellectual property rights are not absolute and can therefore be challenged and cancelled through the U.S. federal court system. When a trademark is cancelled, the U.S. district court has to notify and direct the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) to remove the trademark registration from the USPTO’s registrar. Until CBP is notified that the trademark has been cancelled, CBP will continue to seize products that potentially infringe the rights of the now cancelled trademark. This causes products to be wrongfully seized, and, in turn costs the importer tens of thousands of dollars as […]