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What gets me is that the agent who inspected the packaging knew about this trademark. There must be a very large number of such trademarks and I doubt all the agents know all of them so for the agent who knew about this trademark to be the one who inspected the shipment seems like really bad luck.



When you ship something to another country you likely have to specify a very precise code for calculation of toll / tariff, see e.g.: http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/dds2/taric/measures.jsp...

Which is the category for Electronic Multimeter Without a Recording Device, NOT for use in an aircraft.

I could see a system that cross-references that code with known trademarks -- kind of a like a "Be on Lookout Of" but for design trademarks.


As I read the article I wondered if the inspection was a result of a complaint on Fluke's part and as a result it was a case of justice by money and power?

More generally, I wonder how is it possible that inspectors are expected to deal with all the grey market goods that could be entering the border? Perhaps, a better example are children's toy jewellery which on numerous times have been found to have toxic levels of chemicals (eg. lead to levels high enough to send children into hospitals). Do the inspectors actually test for lead, or is their some sort of certification paper that is required?

What about those cheap electrical parts that you can buy (e.g. computer/iphone power adapters). I read a tear down report stating that these were unsafe because wiring not done to safety codes, so who is responsible for inspections before they enter the border?

The general case is complex, and I've never been able to read how the process is handled, so I assume given the quantity of products being imported they are often priced so cheap because they never go through the QA and safety standards that would be required if they were manufactured here. --Another example of pricing that doesn't factor in the total cost of the good, that is Chinese toys are cheaper than local because they aren't tested to our codes thereby avoiding whole cost structures that local companies incur resulting in cheaper products yet overall they are more expensive to society because 1% of buyers end up in the hospital and incurring those costs.


I doubt agents flip through recent filings, memorize a hand full and just get lucky. More likely Fluke or their lawyers have some way to provide alerts to US Customs.


They have a giant book: http://www.usitc.gov/tata/hts/

There is a really interesting NPR "Planet Money" podcast where they talk to customs folks about the import process. (They were tracing the supply chain for a t-shirt) Customs agents have lots of obscure knowledge about these things.




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