IP Court dismissed the cassation appeal against the court decision in the case of Rinpharm LLC

The Court for Intellectual Property Rights refused to satisfy the individual entrepreneur Valentinov Boris Gennadievich in satisfaction of the cassation appeal filed against the decision of the Arbitration Court of the city of Moscow dated September 20, 2021 in case No. A40-113314 /2021 and the decision of the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal dated December 28, 2021 in the same case application to Rinpharm LLC for the protection of infringed copyright on graphic images with the conditional name "Chinese sage" (the deity of longevity Shou-Sin), symbolizing the thousand-year experience of Chinese medicine.

Zuykov and Partners represented the interests of Rinpharm LLC.

As we reported earlier, the entrepreneur turned to Rinpharm LLC with a claim for compensation for the illegal use of copyright objects. By the decision of the court of first instance, left unchanged by the decision of the court of appeal, the entrepreneur's claims were denied. The decision of first-instance court: https://zuykov.com/en/about/cases/zuykov-and-partners-defended-the-rinfarm-interests-in-a-dispute-over-copyright-protection-and-succeeded-in-dismissing-the-lawsuit/

Disagreeing with the judicial acts of the courts of the first and appellate instances, the businessman appealed to the Intellectual Property Court with a cassation appeal. To substantiate the arguments for challenging the judicial acts, the businessman put forward the thesis that the fact that the defendant owns the exclusive right to the corresponding trademark cannot in itself indicate the plaintiff's consent to the use of the disputed work of fine art by this person. The entrepreneur found unfounded the general conclusion of the courts about the lawful nature of the actions of the defendant in importing the relevant products into the territory of the Russian Federation, and also considered that the courts had come to an unjustified conclusion that there were defects in the evidence presented by him.

Refusing to satisfy the entrepreneur's cassation appeal, the Intellectual Property Rights Court recognized as justified the arguments given in the recall of Rinpharm LLC, and the judicial acts of the courts of first and appeal instances, decided in full accordance with the current legislation.

Thus, the court of cassation, on the basis of a systematic interpretation of the applicable norms of the law of law and clarifications of the highest court, came to the conclusion that in a situation of collision of a protected trademark belonging to different subjects and a work of fine art, the exclusive right to the last of the two named objects of intellectual property cannot be considered violated. if the trademark owner has exercised his exclusive right without violating the content limits of the latter.

In this regard, the Intellectual Property Court recognized as legitimate the conclusions of the courts of the first and appellate instances that at the time of using the disputed designation, the Rinpharm company was the owner of the exclusive right to the trademark according to the certificate of the Russian Federation No. individualization of their products. Under such circumstances, the courts came to the rightful conclusion that the actions of the Rinpharm company in using the disputed designation should be qualified as the use of a trademark based on the law, the owner of which is this person, and not as a fact of violation of the exclusive right of the entrepreneur.

In the rest of the arguments of the entrepreneur, set out in the cassation appeal, the Court for Intellectual Property Rights found unfounded and aimed at re-evaluating the evidence, which is not within the powers of the cassation court.

In view of the foregoing, the entrepreneur’s cassation appeal was denied, and the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court dated September 20, 2021 in case No. A40-113314 /2021 and the decision of the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal dated December 28, 2021 in the same case were left unchanged.

Link to the reasoned decision of the court of cassation: https://kad.arbitr.ru/Document/Pdf/0028cb04-7e92-4fa1-8c56-6855d425ccb4/3e0f40a5-99d0-4e91-9f5f-0a506c10584e/A40-113314-2021_20220513_Reshenija_i_postanovenija.pdf?Addislenija