Sergey Zuykov commented on the government bill on the possibility of registering brands by individuals

The draft law, which allows citizens to register trademarks, has been approved by the government for submission to the State Duma. Now, according to the Civil Code, only legal entities and individual entrepreneurs can register trademarks. Experts note that the innovation will remove bureaucratic barriers and will solve the current problems with the registration of signs for individual entrepreneurs.

Sergey Zuykov, a managing partner of Zuykov and partners, believes that the innovation will simplify registration and, most likely, increase the number of applications submitted. Now there is an acute problem of registering trademarks for individual entrepreneurs - due to the tightening of requirements, many of them have ceased their activities, and a huge number of marks are under threat of cancellation. “In some cases, problems could be avoided, for example, by making changes to the registration address, changing Russia to another country, but this happens rather rarely. It is possible to save the rights to trademarks in one case out of ten,” says Sergey Zuykov.

In total, in 2021, almost 54.9 thousand trademarks were registered and more than 107 thousand applications for this procedure were submitted from Russian and foreign entrepreneurs. The approved bill has been in preparation since 2020, the need for changes was explained, in particular, by the unequal position of Russians and foreign citizens, whose applications Rospatent registers even without the status of the individual entrepreneurs (let us explain that registration of marks for individuals is common in Europe, the USA, China). The Ministry of Economic Development notes that innovations are aimed primarily at self-employed citizens.

Source: Kommersant Publishing House