Trademark Infringement and Counterfeit Goods in Morocco

Infringing a registered trademark in Morocco is called contrefaçon, and it is governed by Law 17-97 on the protection of industrial property, administered by the Office Marocain de la Propriété Industrielle et Commerciale (OMPIC) and enforced through the commercial courts. Enforcement is a matter of Moroccan law — a home-country registration does not, by itself, give a right that a Moroccan court will enforce.

The starting point is that contrefaçon is broader than fake physical goods: it is any infringement of the trademark owner's rights, whether that is a counterfeit product, an imitation sign, or confusing commercial use. Using or reproducing the mark for identical goods infringes directly (Article 154); using an imitation, or the mark for similar goods, infringes where it creates a likelihood of confusion (Article 155). Not every unauthorized reseller is a counterfeiter, and genuine parallel imports are analysed separately.

The practical priorities for a rights holder are usually the same: confirm the right and who owns it, preserve evidence before it disappears, decide whether the situation is urgent, and choose among the civil, criminal and customs routes. Because a court-ordered evidence seizure (saisie-contrefaçon) carries a short follow-up deadline, and because the civil action is time-barred, acting in the right order and on time matters as much as being right on the merits.

This guide is the specialist infringement-and-counterfeit guide in the Moroccan trademark cluster. For the broad enforcement framework and the map of routes it sits under the hub on trademark protection and enforcement in Morocco; it is informational and does not advise on any specific dispute.

Infringement starts from a valid, registered right. Under Article 201 of Law 17-97, any infringement of the rights of the trademark owner constitutes contrefaçon — so the statutory concept is the infringement of the exclusive right, not a description of fake goods. The exclusive right itself attaches to the mark for the goods and services designated in the registration, and the analysis is always tied to what the registration actually covers.

Whether a particular use infringes turns on two things: the sign used, and the goods or services it is used for. Moroccan law separates the case of an identical sign used for identical goods from the case of an imitation or a similar sign used for identical or similar goods. The first is treated as infringement on the fact of use; the second requires a likelihood of confusion. Getting this distinction right is the foundation of any infringement assessment, because it decides what has to be proved.

Two further points frame the whole subject. First, the right is territorial — it is the Moroccan right that is enforced, whether through a Moroccan registration, a Madrid designation effective in Morocco, or, exceptionally, a mark well known in Morocco. Second, some uses that look unauthorized are not infringement at all, because the goods are genuine and the owner's right has been exhausted; that is dealt with below.

The strongest case is the identical one. Under Article 154, the reproduction, use or affixing of a mark — and the use of a reproduced mark — for goods or services identical to those for which it is registered, without the owner's consent, infringes the exclusive right. This covers the classic counterfeit: the same sign applied to the same kind of product the mark is registered for.

In this identical-sign, identical-goods situation the case turns on the fact of the unauthorized use rather than on a separate confusion analysis. The reproduction can be exact or can add words that do not change the essential sign — additions such as "formula", "type", "system" or "imitation" do not save an otherwise infringing reproduction. The practical work is to establish that the registered sign is being reproduced or used for the identical goods, and that there is no consent.

Most real disputes are not perfectly identical. Under Article 155, the reproduction, use or affixing of an imitation of the mark, the use of an imitated mark, or the use of the mark (or a similar sign) for goods or services similar to those registered, infringes where it creates a risk of confusion in the mind of the public. Here the confusion analysis is central: the closer the signs and the closer the goods, the more likely confusion becomes.

Confusion is a question the court decides on the facts — comparing the signs visually, phonetically and conceptually, comparing the goods or services, and considering how the relevant public encounters them. This is why a similar-sign case is more evidence-intensive than an identical-sign case: the owner has to show not just the use, but that the use is likely to make the public believe the goods come from, or are connected with, the trademark owner.

Article 155 also frames the commercial acts the owner can prohibit — reproducing the sign, and importing, offering for sale, selling or stocking a product bearing the protected mark — subject to one important limit, the exhaustion of the right, discussed below.

In everyday language a "counterfeit" is a fake product — a copy passed off as the real thing. In Moroccan trademark law the word contrefaçon is wider and, at the same time, more precise: it is the legal label for infringing the trademark owner's rights under Article 201, whatever form the infringement takes. A fake handbag and an imitation logo on a signboard can both be contrefaçon, even though only one involves a physical counterfeit good.

Keeping the everyday and the legal meaning apart avoids two common errors. The first is treating every trademark dispute as if it were criminal counterfeiting of fake goods, when it may be a civil matter about confusingly similar branding with no fake product at all. The second is assuming that because something is not a fake physical product, nothing can be done — when confusing commercial use of a similar sign can still infringe under Article 155.

So the correct question is not only "are these goods fake?" but "is the owner's exclusive right being infringed?" — a question that also has to be checked against the exhaustion rule, because some genuine goods can be resold without infringing at all.

Because contrefaçon is defined as infringement of the right rather than as the sale of fakes, it reaches conduct that has nothing to do with a counterfeit product. Using a confusingly similar name on shop fascia, packaging, advertising or a company name; affixing the mark to goods; offering or putting infringing goods on the market; and stocking them for sale can each fall within the prohibited acts, subject to the confusion requirement for similar signs.

This breadth is useful to a rights holder, because it means enforcement is not limited to seizing fake products. But it also means the analysis must be honest about which acts are actually caught, and for which goods and services. A sign used for goods wholly outside the registration's specification, and with no confusion, may not infringe at all — the registration defines the boundaries of the right, and enforcement cannot stretch beyond them.

Not all unauthorized selling is infringement. Moroccan law applies a national exhaustion rule: once genuine goods bearing the mark have been placed on the market in Morocco by the owner or with the owner's express consent, the owner can no longer use the trademark to prohibit further acts relating to those particular goods on Moroccan territory. Reselling genuine goods that the owner has already put on the Moroccan market is therefore generally not infringement.

The key word is national. Because exhaustion is tied to goods placed on the market in Morocco, genuine goods first marketed by the owner abroad are treated differently: a parallel import of genuine goods first sold outside Morocco is not automatically outside the owner's control, and may be a matter the owner can address. What must not be done is to call such genuine parallel imports "counterfeit" — they are not fakes; they are genuine goods, and the question is the separate one of exhaustion and consent.

The precise territorial trigger and the treatment of a given parallel-import scenario should be checked against the current consolidated text and the facts, because the analysis is technical and turns on where and with whose consent the goods were first sold. The safe rule of thumb is that genuine goods first placed on the Moroccan market by or with the owner's consent can normally be resold, while genuine goods brought in from abroad raise a distinct question that is not resolved simply by calling them counterfeit.

Distributor and agent situations are a frequent source of trademark disputes, and they do not all fit the counterfeit label. An authorized distributor selling genuine goods within its arrangement is acting lawfully. An unauthorized reseller of genuine goods raises the exhaustion question above, not automatically an infringement. But a former distributor who keeps using the brand after the relationship ends — on signage, advertising, packaging or a domain — can move into infringement, because the consent that once covered the use has gone.

These cases often sit at the intersection of trademark law and the contract that governed the relationship, and the ownership of the Moroccan mark can itself be in issue where a local partner registered it. The commercial-relationship side — how an agency or distribution arrangement is ended and what obligations survive — is treated in the guide to terminating a commercial agent or distributor in Morocco, while the ownership and squatting dimension is covered for foreign owners in foreign brand protection in Morocco.

The practical point is to classify the situation before acting: genuine goods, altered goods, confusing branding, or true counterfeits each call for a different analysis, and treating them all as counterfeiting overstates the case and can weaken it.

Trademark infringement increasingly happens online — on websites, marketplace listings, social-media offers, digital advertising and domain names. Moroccan trademark law is technology-neutral: Law 17-97 does not set out separate, platform-specific statutory rules for the internet, so online use is assessed under the same Article 154 and Article 155 framework as offline use. Using a confusingly similar sign to sell or advertise online, or applying the mark to goods offered through a marketplace, is analysed as commercial use like any other.

What the online context mainly changes is the evidence and the practical response. Listings, posts, URLs and advertisements can help establish the infringing use and the actors behind it, and platform takedown or notice mechanisms can sometimes stop a listing quickly. But the legal proposition still has to be grounded in the statute — there is no special Moroccan online-infringement offence to invoke, and the strength of a screenshot as evidence is a separate question, addressed below.

Before anything is filed, standing has to be clear, because it is the first thing a defendant tests. Under Article 202, the civil infringement action is open to the owner of the mark and, unless the contract provides otherwise, to an exclusive licensee. The owner's title should be confirmed — the registration, and the chain of title where the mark has been assigned or moved within a group — and a licensee's right to act should be checked against the licence.

Recordal matters here too. Under Article 157, assignments and licences are entered in the national register, and recordal is what makes such acts opposable to third parties, so confirming that the relevant recordals are in place is part of preparing to enforce. A non-exclusive licensee's position should be treated cautiously and only as the statute and the licence actually allow, rather than assumed. Getting standing and title in order first avoids an otherwise strong case being defeated on a preliminary point.

Infringement cases are won or lost on evidence, and evidence disappears. It is worth distinguishing between practical preservation and formal evidence measures. On the practical side, a rights holder can gather a genuine sample and a suspected sample for comparison, invoices and receipts, packaging, photographs, the URLs and screenshots of online listings and social-media offers, shipping or customs documentation, and a record of who is selling, where and since when. A test purchase by an investigator can document the sale.

On the formal side sit the stronger tools: the registration certificate and chain-of-title documents that prove the right and standing; a report drawn up by a judicial officer (commissaire de justice / huissier); and, above all, the court-ordered saisie-contrefaçon described below. The important caution is not to overstate the practical material: an ordinary screenshot or a self-taken photograph does not carry the same evidential weight as a bailiff's report or a court-authorized seizure. Self-collected evidence is valuable for building the picture and deciding strategy, but a formal measure is usually what secures proof for the case itself.

The saisie-contrefaçon is the central evidence tool in Moroccan trademark enforcement. Under Article 222, at the request of the trademark owner (or a party entitled to act), the president of the court may authorise a judicial officer to carry out a detailed description of the allegedly infringing goods — with or without the taking of samples — or an actual seizure of them. Its purpose is to fix the evidence of infringement before it can be moved, altered or destroyed.

In practice this is requested on the strength of the registered right and evidence of the suspected infringement, and it is carried out by the judicial officer, who may in appropriate cases be assisted by an expert. There are two flavours: a descriptive seizure (a detailed description, possibly with samples) and an actual seizure of the goods, depending on what the court authorises. It is a powerful measure precisely because it produces court-supervised proof — but it is not a judgment, and it does not by itself decide the case; it preserves the evidence on which the substantive action is then built.

A saisie-contrefaçon comes with a strict condition that is easy to miss and fatal to overlook. Under Article 222, the rights holder must bring the substantive action within thirty days of the seizure or description being carried out; if that deadline is missed, the description or seizure is null and void by operation of law. Moroccan courts have treated this as a matter of public order that cannot be cured after the fact, so a claim resting on a seizure whose follow-up was late can be declared inadmissible.

Two things follow. The thirty-day period runs from the measure, not from some later date, and it requires the substantive action — the case on the merits — to be commenced within it. And the deadline is specific to the seizure: it should not be confused with the three-year limitation period for the action itself, or with the ten-working-day window in a customs suspension. Because the consequence of missing it is the loss of the very evidence the seizure secured, diarising and meeting the thirty days is treated as non-negotiable.

Preserving evidence is not the same as stopping the infringement, and the two should not be confused. The saisie-contrefaçon is an evidence-preservation measure; separately, where the situation is urgent — stock about to be sold or shipped, or continuing harm — the president of the court can be asked to order provisional measures, such as prohibiting the continuation of the infringing acts pending the substantive dispute. These interim measures hold the position while the merits are prepared.

Urgency is assessed on the facts, and provisional relief supports the substantive action rather than replacing it; conditions, and any security the court requires, apply. The practical skill is sequencing: securing the evidence, obtaining any urgent order needed to stop ongoing harm, and then pursuing the merits — each with its own timing — rather than treating them as a single step.

A cease-and-desist letter is a strategic option, not a statutory prerequisite. Sent at the right moment, it can put the infringer on notice, ask for cessation and undertakings, open a settlement, and support takedown requests to a marketplace or platform. In many straightforward cases a well-judged letter resolves the matter without litigation.

But timing is a genuine strategic decision, not a formality. Warning an infringer before evidence is secured can prompt the destruction or concealment of stock, listings and records — the very material a case depends on. Where a saisie-contrefaçon or an urgent measure is contemplated, the evidence step is often taken first, and the warning, if any, follows. Whether to write first or seize first is exactly the kind of judgement that should be made deliberately, weighing the value of an early settlement against the risk of tipping off the infringer.

The civil action is the ordinary way to have infringement stopped and compensated. Under Article 15 of Law 17-97, disputes arising from the application of the law are heard exclusively by the commercial courts, so a civil trademark infringement action, and the related provisional measures, are brought there rather than before the ordinary civil courts. Criminal counterfeiting, by contrast, follows the criminal-procedure track.

In the civil action the owner (or exclusive licensee) proves the right, the standing, and the infringing use under Article 154 or Article 155, and seeks the remedies the law provides. The case is decided on the evidence — which is why the evidence and seizure steps matter so much — and no outcome is guaranteed. The role of the guide here is to map the route and the framework; the detailed conduct of proceedings is a matter for counsel on the specific facts.

Where infringement is established, Law 17-97 provides a range of remedies. Under Article 224, the court may order the infringement to stop and award compensation, and the owner may elect between damages for the actual harm suffered and a fixed statutory indemnity. Depending on the case, the measures available can also include confiscation of the infringing goods, their destruction or removal from the channels of commerce, and publication of the judgment.

These are the remedies the statute actually supports, and the guide states them at that level. Moroccan law is not assumed to offer remedies drawn from other systems — there is no treble-damages or punitive-damages regime to invoke, and destruction or confiscation is a measure the court may order in an appropriate case rather than an automatic consequence of every finding. What a given court will order depends on the facts, the evidence and what is sought.

On damages, Article 224 gives the owner a choice between compensation for the actual harm suffered and a fixed, lump-sum indemnity. Where actual harm is claimed, the factors a court may consider include the prejudice suffered, lost profits, and the benefit the infringer derived from the infringement; moral prejudice can also feature. The fixed-indemnity alternative exists precisely for cases where proving exact loss is difficult.

What this guide does not do is put a number on it. There is no standard or average award, and no reliable range: the amount depends on the evidence of harm and benefit in the particular case, and figures quoted for other matters are not a guide. The practical work is to document the harm and the infringer's activity well enough to support whichever basis is chosen, rather than to rely on an assumed market figure.

Trademark counterfeiting can also be a criminal offence, distinct from the civil action and reserved for qualifying conduct. Under Law 17-97 as amended, counterfeiting a registered mark or fraudulently affixing a mark belonging to another is punishable under Article 225, and fraudulently imitating a registered mark so as to mislead the buyer is punishable under Article 226; the offences reach conduct such as knowingly holding, selling, offering for sale, or importing and exporting goods bearing a counterfeit mark. The penalties are imprisonment and fines, set at a heavier level for the counterfeiting offence under Article 225 than for the fraudulent-imitation offence under Article 226, and they can be increased for a repeat offence within a defined recent period. Because the exact imprisonment terms and fine amounts are fixed by the current Law 17-97 as amended and can change, they should be confirmed against the current consolidated text before advising or filing rather than relied on from a secondary summary.

The criminal route is not automatic. A civil infringement can exist without any criminal offence: the criminal provisions generally require an element of fraud or knowledge, and it should never be assumed that every unauthorized use is criminal counterfeiting. Choosing the criminal route — with the involvement of the police and public prosecutor it entails — is a strategic decision that depends on the seriousness of the conduct, the evidence of intent, and the objective, rather than a default response to any infringement.

Where counterfeit goods cross the border, the customs authorities are a separate and often effective route. Under Articles 176.1 to 176.8 of Law 17-97, customs can suspend the release of goods suspected of being counterfeit at import, export or transit, on a qualifying rights holder's request and, where the conditions are met, on their own initiative. Stopping goods at the border can be more effective than pursuing them once they are dispersed in the market.

Two features matter here. Border action is separate from the court proceedings on the merits — a customs suspension buys time and secures goods, but the substantive case still has to be pursued — and it runs on its own short deadlines, including a window of ten working days from notification for the rights holder to justify that it has initiated the appropriate measures or action, failing which the goods are released. The full customs procedure — the application, the detention mechanics and the destruction process — is an operational subject in its own right and should be taken from the current customs framework rather than improvised.

Trademark rights have to be enforced in time. Under Article 227, the civil infringement action is time-barred after three years. The practical message is that discovering an infringement is not a reason to wait: evidence degrades, stock moves, and the limitation period runs, so preserving rights promptly is part of enforcing them.

The exact operation of the period — in particular its precise statutory trigger and how it applies to a continuing or repeated course of infringing acts — should be confirmed against the current text and the facts rather than reduced to a slogan. What is clear is that there is a defined limitation window, that it is measured in years rather than being open-ended, and that a rights holder who sits on a known infringement risks losing the ability to act on it.

Infringement enforcement turns on getting the right, the route and the deadlines right, and that is where a Moroccan lawyer, or Moroccan counsel instructed for the matter, has a concrete role. In an infringement matter a lawyer in Morocco may confirm the registration, ownership and chain of title, verify standing to sue under Article 202, and classify the alleged use — deciding whether it is an identical-sign case under Article 154, a confusion case under Article 155, a genuine-goods or parallel-import question, or true counterfeiting — so the case is framed correctly from the outset.

The role is practical as much as analytical. A trademark lawyer in Morocco may plan the evidence strategy and choose between practical preservation and a formal measure, coordinate the judicial officer, prepare and obtain a saisie-contrefaçon under Article 222 and — critically — manage the thirty-day follow-up so the seizure is not lost. They may evaluate whether an urgent provisional measure is warranted, decide between the civil, criminal and customs routes, coordinate a customs detention, and weigh whether a cease-and-desist letter is safe before evidence is secured. And they may run the proceedings before the commercial court, document damages under Article 224, and preserve the limitation period under Article 227.

The value is in those specific judgement calls — classification, standing, evidence sequencing, the seizure deadline, route selection and damages — rather than in a generic instruction to seek advice. A trademark infringement lawyer in Morocco is engaged directly by the rights holder; this guide is informational and describes that role rather than offering it.

Trademark infringement in Morocco is frequently one front in a wider, multi-country enforcement effort run by a foreign law firm, an in-house legal team, a global brand-protection function, or the trademark attorneys, IP agents and investigators who manage an international brand. In that setting, local counsel in Morocco typically executes the Moroccan procedural steps while coordinating with the international team on a single strategy.

That coordination is concrete: assembling the chain-of-title and foreign-registration evidence that proves the Moroccan right; sharing and comparing genuine and suspected samples across jurisdictions; aligning the Moroccan action with simultaneous infringements and enforcement elsewhere; coordinating a customs strategy at the Moroccan border with border action in other countries; handling a distributor or reseller dispute that spans several markets; running online enforcement and platform takedowns in parallel; and feeding the Moroccan position — evidence secured, seizures carried out, deadlines running, remedies sought — back into a global settlement or litigation plan and internal reporting. A Moroccan lawyer may act as the local execution and advice point within that structure, working alongside foreign counsel and regional MENA and Africa advisers rather than in place of them. This description is institutional and informational; it does not imply that AvocAffaire is retained as counsel.