Crusher converts confiscated trainers into fuel

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A huge pile of cartons were unloaded from a truck in the yard of the Kymenlaakson Jäte waste treatment plant in Anjalankoski near Kouvola yesterday.
      Thousands of trainers packed in plastic bags tumbled out of the boxes. A yellow front loader dumped them onto a conveyor belt which carried them to the crushers.
      The footwear was torn up into pieces, and yet one could still recognize the three or four parallel stripes of the sports shoes. They were the reason for the 58,572 pairs of trainers being now on their way to heating plants to be used as a source of energy.
     
The shoes were confiscated by Customs officers in Kotka as long ago as October 2003, when the consignment was on its way from China to Russia via Finland. The trademark of the confiscated sports shoes is Heroway.
      Adidas filed a lawsuit in the Helsinki District Court against the Lebanese Russian-based entrepreneur who had ordered the shoes from China. The litigation over their fate has continued for many years.
      Eventually the trainers were ordered to be destroyed by the Finnish Customs.
      Even though Adidas won the case, the company will have to pay the destruction costs of approximately EUR 20,000.
      Lawyer Hanna-Maija Elo, the legal adviser of Adidas, does not believe that the company will ever get its money back.
      ”The counterparty has not been willing to cooperate at any stage”, she reports.
     
Adidas would have been ready to settle the matter and to discuss the possibility of giving the shoes to charity. However, the owner of the shoes could not be reached at any point, according to Hanna-Maija Elo.
      For Adidas it was essential that the pirated sports shoes did not end up in the market.
     
Under the law, the logos infringing a registered trademark have to be discarded or the copies be destroyed, says Elo.
      ”According to experience worldwide, pirated goods have frequently ended up in the market instead of charity”, Elo claims.
      ”However, if the stripes had been removed, the trainers would no longer have infringed the Adidas trademark”, Elo contemplates.
     
Moreover, if the confiscated shoes had not been destroyed, the owner should have paid customs duties for them. According to Elo, the counterparty was not willing to pay anything.
      The nearly 5-year litigation process over the fate of the pirated trainers has been expensive, but Elo says that there was no other option.
      ”In order to prove that such brand infringements are not acceptable, one has to intervene in them”, Elo concludes.
     
The Finnish Customs seizes and destroys large amounts of unused clothes, bags, and other textiles every year.
      In addition, brand-new electronics, cosmetics, watches, toys, and medicines end up in waste disposal machines.
     
In 2007 alone, the Finnish Customs confiscated a total of 1.9 million pirated products.
      According to Customs officials, the value of the goods was around EUR 26 million.
      ”According to the law, products which have been manufactured in contravention of patent or copyright have to be destroyed”, explains Senior Customs Inspector Anssi Kartila.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish Customs to dispose of 60,000 pairs of striped trainers (18.8.2008)

Helsingin Sanomat