Region: Russian Federation

The best-known involvement of the Anti-monopoly Service in IP rights is its ardent though unsuccessful support of the liberalisation of parallel imports. However, it is now targeting another issue: the requirement that imported drugs registered in Europe and the United States undergo clinical trials before they can be registered in Russia.

27 January 2016

Trade secrets are a very specific form of IP right, as in order to assert a trade secret the rights holder can rely only on his or her word and the contract. Cases over know-how are rare. However, one recent case involved two entrepreneurs in St Petersburg.

16 December 2015

The recent appointment of Grigory Ivliev as the new head of the Federal Service of Intellectual Property marks a new era for the office. Under forthcoming legislation. Its remit will be widened to cover not only the issues that it regulates at present (including inventions, designs and trademarks), but also large-scale copyright (eg, music, films and literature).

09 September 2015

The German word '<i>Gastarbeiter</i>' ('guestworker') has been part of the Russian language for more than a decade, as guestworkers have come to the country in large numbers to take up job vacancies requiring moderate skills. The Patent Office recently dealt with an application to register the GASTARBEITER trademark in Classes 9 and 25, raising the issue of whether such application was in the public interest.

08 July 2015

Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in 1991, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine have…

17 June 2015

The ability to retrieve accurate, precise and comprehensive information on patent applications is crucial. The Russian Patent and Trademark Office (Rospatent) both publishes original patent documents and maintains electronic databases with a search option. However, while it has made good progress in providing official patent publications, Rospatent has not yet optimised the information that is provided for search purposes.

27 May 2015

A recent decision demonstrates that parties should be attentive when concluding agreements in advance of obtaining protection. Such agreements should include a provision to the effect that after grant of the patent, the parties will sign a regular patent licence. This will protect them from unforeseen consequences.

06 May 2015

Under government plans to combat tax evasion through financial transfers out of Russia to low-tax jurisdictions, the tax authorities have focused their attention on cross-border transactions, including those involving IP assets, as Russian companies often hide a substantial part of their profits from Russian taxation through royalty payments made to intellectual asset management centres outside Russia.

29 April 2015

A Russian court recently awarded the highest-ever compensation for infringement caused by parallel imports. It is hoped that the size of the compensation award will serve as a powerful deterrent to would-be parallel importers. Meanwhile, a working committee set up by the Eurasian Economic Union to examine the issue of parallel imports has so far failed to reach any conclusions.

18 February 2015

The IP Court has ordered the cancellation of a figurative trademark registration which used the name of Yury Gagarin, the first cosmonaut. However, the court reached the opposite conclusion in a similar case involving the name of a well-known pilot from the 1930s.

04 February 2015