The spectacular increase in copyright piracy, brand counterfeiting, and passing-off of trademarks and other IP rights of late has had calamitous market repercussions and has forced companies to expend ever more resources on fighting this scourge by all legal means at their disposal.

The first preventive measure is to keep infringing merchandise from gaining entry to the territory of Spain through the European Union's foreign borders. ELZABURU handles both national and EU-wide applications for Customs protection for IP rights, and we were the first Spanish firm to seek Customs action in the Community as a whole.

Once goods have entered Spain, or are manufactured in Spain, active involvement by the police is called for. The special circumstances surrounding these activities mean that we have to coordinate rapid action by police units specializing in these types of criminal offences to arrange for raids and seizure of counterfeit goods.

We have designed anticounterfeiting programmes that can be scaled to the budgetary needs of each client to ensure a comprehensive and consistent approach to combating this activity.

ELZABURU's anticounterfeiting team works in close cooperation with Customs, the police, prosecutors, and the courts and has extensive experience in uncovering counterfeiting, gathering criminal evidence, and then bringing criminal proceedings with a view to obtaining convictions and damages.