A foreign brand that has structured legitimate imports into Japan through an Importer of Record (IOR) arrangement is often surprised to learn that a genuine, properly declared shipment has nothing to do with a separate question the brand still needs to answer: has anyone recorded the brand's trademark, patent, design, or copyright with Japan Customs (税関) so that counterfeit or otherwise infringing shipments addressed to someone else get stopped at the border? These are two different problems solved by two different actors, and conflating them leaves a brand's own goods properly imported while its market is left exposed to parallel counterfeit inflow the brand never authorized.
Why Border Enforcement Recordation Matters Even When Your Own Imports Are Clean
Japan Customs enforces provisions of the Customs Act (関税法) that identify certain categories of goods as prohibited from import, including goods that infringe intellectual property rights (知的財産権を侵害する物品). Japan Customs, like a number of other customs authorities, operates a formal application process that allows a rights holder to have its intellectual property recorded in advance, so that customs officers reviewing incoming shipments have a reference point for identifying goods that may infringe that right without having to start an investigation from zero on each shipment.
The important point for a brand owner is this: recordation is not about your own supply chain. Your own imports, if declared correctly by your IOR provider or under an Attorney for Customs Procedures (税関事務管理人) appointment, already clear as legitimate goods. Recordation is a tool aimed at everyone else, specifically at shipments addressed to competitors, resellers, or unrelated third parties who may be bringing counterfeit or gray-market infringing goods into Japan under your brand. Once recorded, the rights holder gives customs a documented basis to flag and, where appropriate, act on suspect shipments that the brand owner itself never sees coming and would otherwise have no visibility into until the counterfeit product is already on shelves or damaging the brand's reputation with consumers.
This matters most, practically, once a brand has established real commercial presence and sales volume in Japan. Before that point there is often little counterfeit or parallel activity worth intercepting, because there is no established market signal for bad actors to piggyback on. After that point, an unrecorded brand is effectively asking customs to protect a market position it has not told customs exists.
Who Can Actually Apply for Recordation: A Structural Question, Not a Detail
This is where the IOR relationship and the recordation relationship diverge structurally, and where brand owners most often get the framing wrong.
Recordation is generally an action of the rights holder, not the importer. The applicant for an intellectual property recordation is typically the owner of the trademark, patent, design right, or copyright, or a party the rights holder has properly and specifically authorized to act on its behalf for that purpose. This is a rights-enforcement filing tied to ownership of the intellectual property itself, made to a government authority for the purpose of border protection. It is a different legal act from importing goods.
IOR (Importer of Record). Under an IOR arrangement, Aplash G.K. is the importer named on the import declaration (輸入申告): Aplash purchases the brand owner's genuine goods from the overseas seller, clears them through customs, and re-sells to the Japan-side buyer. Aplash's role is structured around genuine buy-and-sell substance and importer liability for that specific transaction chain. Being the importer of a brand's own genuine goods is not the same legal position as being the intellectual property owner, or an authorized applicant, for the purpose of a customs recordation filing aimed at intercepting someone else's infringing shipments. An IOR provider brings goods in; it does not, by virtue of that role alone, hold or exercise the brand's underlying intellectual property rights.
ACP (Attorney for Customs Procedures / 税関事務管理人). Under an ACP appointment, the non-resident brand owner remains the legal importer named on its own import declaration, and Aplash acts as the Japan-resident procedural agent handling customs procedures for that importer under the Customs Act. This, too, is a role tied to a specific import transaction where the appointing party is already the importer of its own goods. It is a distinct service from IOR (the appointing non-resident, not Aplash, is the importer), and it should never be presented as an alternative to IOR since the two involve entirely different parties named on the declaration. Neither the IOR structure nor the ACP structure is, by itself, the vehicle for applying to record intellectual property rights for enforcement against third-party shipments. That decision and that filing sit with the rights holder.
The practical consequence: a brand owner cannot assume that appointing an IOR provider, or entering into an ACP arrangement, has somehow "handled" border enforcement of its brand. Those arrangements govern the brand's own genuine import transactions. Recordation is a separate, affirmative step the rights holder (often acting through intellectual property counsel) needs to take in its own name, or through a party it has specifically and properly authorized for that enforcement purpose, which is a different authorization than a commercial import services engagement.
How This Differs from Day-to-Day IOR Compliance Screening
A brand new to the IOR model sometimes assumes that because an IOR provider already performs compliance screening on every shipment, intellectual property enforcement must be part of the same bundle. It is not, and the two functions are worth separating clearly.
(a) Denied-party and restricted-item screening is reactive, transactional, and defensive. Before accepting a specific shipment, an IOR provider checks the parties and the goods in that transaction: is the consignor or consignee on a restricted or sanctioned list, and is the item itself something the law prohibits or restricts from import at all (for example, certain categories of goods that cannot lawfully enter Japan regardless of who is importing them). This work protects the IOR provider and the brand owner from unknowingly participating in a specific prohibited transaction. It says nothing about whether some unrelated third party is separately shipping counterfeit product under the brand's name through a completely different channel.
(b) Recordation is proactive, brand-owner-initiated, and enforcement-facing outward. It is not a check performed on a transaction the brand owner is party to. It is a standing instruction the rights holder gives to customs, in advance and independent of any particular shipment, asking customs to watch for infringing goods bearing that brand across the entire flow of imports into Japan, including shipments the brand owner has no visibility into and no commercial relationship with.
(c) The two functions never substitute for each other. A brand that has good denied-party screening on its own IOR shipments has protected its own supply chain. It has not protected its market from a third party importing counterfeit goods through an entirely different importer, IOR provider, or channel. Only recordation, or the absence of it, determines whether customs has a documented basis to intercept that separate, unrelated shipment.
Practical Sequencing: When to Pursue Recordation, and Who Should Drive It
Recordation is generally not something a brand pursues on day one of testing the Japan market, and it is not something that gets bundled automatically into setting up an IOR or ACP arrangement. The typical sequencing looks like this:
(a) Early market entry. The brand is testing demand, running its first shipments through an IOR or ACP structure, and has not yet established a Japan sales footprint significant enough to attract counterfeit or gray-market activity worth intercepting at scale. Recordation at this stage is usually premature; there is limited market position to protect and the administrative burden of maintaining a recordation is real.
(b) Established Japan sales volume. Once the brand has a genuine, ongoing commercial presence in Japan, whether through the IOR channel, a distributor, or its own entity, and has built market visibility worth protecting, the calculus changes. This is typically the point at which pursuing customs recordation becomes worth the rights holder's time and cost, because there is now an actual market position for counterfeiters to exploit and for customs enforcement to meaningfully defend.
(c) Who drives the filing. The decision to apply, and the application itself, belongs to the rights holder. In practice this is usually coordinated through intellectual property counsel who can confirm current filing requirements, evidentiary standards for proving ownership and use of the mark or right, and the specific procedural steps Japan Customs currently requires, none of which should be treated as fixed or assumed without direct confirmation. An IOR or ACP engagement with Aplash addresses the brand's own import compliance; it does not, on its own, constitute or trigger a recordation filing, and a brand owner should not assume one has occurred simply because an import structure is in place.
Conclusion
Genuine, properly declared imports and border enforcement against someone else's counterfeit shipments are separate problems with separate owners. An IOR provider takes title to and clears the brand's own goods; an ACP appointment lets a non-resident brand remain its own importer while a Japan-resident agent handles customs procedures; neither role makes the provider the rights holder or an authorized enforcement applicant for the brand's intellectual property. A foreign brand that has reached meaningful sales volume in Japan should treat customs recordation as a distinct, proactive decision to raise with its intellectual property counsel, not an assumption to make about what its import structure already covers.
This article is informational only and does not constitute legal, tax, or regulatory advice. Consult a qualified advisor before acting on the content. Last updated: August 2026.