Threats And Risks For Trademarks In Russia

• Published date: 05 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Intellectual Property, Trademark
• Law Firm: Gorodissky & Partners
• Author: Mr Evgeny Alexandrov, Alexey Kratiuk and Alexander Nesterov

Intellectual property has its value if it is duly protected in a country where a company has its business interests. Despite the current sanctions policy against Russia and the countersanctions adopted by Russia in response to the actions of some foreign countries from the socalled "unfriendly" list of countries, Russia remains a key participant in the global intellectual property system that includes a number of International Treaties and the institute of IP in our country continues to work effectively to protect the legitimate interests and rights of IP owners, regardless of what country they come from. The Russian intellectual property system operates in full conformity with the rules of substantive and procedural law as laid down by part IV of the Russian Civil Code that relates to IP rights.

It means that those companies, under the influence of the political decisions of their governments or for other commercial reasons, are forced to consider suspending their businesses in Russia or even leaving the Russian market, should not be concerned about unfair, politically motivated, or biased treatment of their IP rights by the official Russian IP bodies such as the Russian Patent and Trademark Office (hereinafter referred to as "Rospatent") or IP Court.

This, however, should not be interpreted as though no proactive measures are required to safeguard IP rights owners' interests in Russia. On the contrary, IP owners should take care of high-level protection of their IP, especially trademarks, using all available legal remedies as provided by the Russian law including possible legal actions against third parties infringing trademark filings or registrations as a case may be. Such actions may also be required to hinder the dilution of famous trademarks in a situation when it comes to a third party's trademark filing in respect of a similar mark covering a wide range of goods incorporating those being dissimilar to the goods of the genuine trademark owner.

Insofar as trademarks are concerned all legal mechanisms for protection and enforcement of rights established by the Russian law remain fully in force as it follows from the current practice in both administrative and judicial cases. This, in turn, reflects steady commitments of competent bodies to the legal approaches and procedures for the enforcement and protection of rights and a stable state of affairs in this regard.

Accordingly, all recent bad faith filings by Russian legal entities or individual entrepreneurs of trademarks that are identical or similar to famous third parties' trademarks covering similar or dissimilar goods and services (e.g. ASOS, BUD, EPIC...