"XVIII Forum on intellectual property. Russia and CIS" ended in Moscow.

The company "Zuykov and partners" acted as the general partner of "XVIII Forum on intellectual property. Russia and CIS" which took place from 23 to 24 of March 2017 in Moscow at the hotel Metropol.

"Forum on intellectual property.Russia and CIS" is a traditional event in which representatives of the professional community discuss issues of importance at the moment, related to the protection of intellectual property in Russia and CIS countries.

This year the Forum was attended by over 150 people for two days, representing 7 Federal districts of the Russian Federation and CIS countries. The vast majority of participants and guests of the Forum were representatives of the professional business community (heads of legal services, lawyers, heads of departments of intellectual property, patent attorneys, experts and managers on intellectual property, partners of consulting companies, lawyers, heads of patent firms and independent patent attorneys and managers of small companies-patent holders). High-ranking employees of Rospatent and acting judges were involved to participate in the discussions.

On the first day of the Forum a plenary session took place dedicated to trends of development of legislation in the field of intellectual property and trademarks. The speakers reviewed the latest changes made to part IV of the RF civil code, the issues of trademark registration and disposition of the exclusive right, as well as novelties in the taxation of REED and facilitation of administration of the tax deduction.

Also in the first day of work of "XVIII Forum on intellectual property. Russia and CIS" a special two-hour session on the protection of intellectual property in Belarus and Kazakhstan was held. The greatest interest in the discussion was raised by questions on the fight against parallel imports in the countries of the EEU, on the protection of copyright on the software, as well as the development of mechanisms for coordination of the protection of rights to objects of intellectual property in the countries of the Union.

In the afternoon Forum continued in format of parallel units dedicated to the protection of various intellectual property objects. According to guests and participants of the Forum, the most interesting discussion took place in Block "A", dedicated to the protection of trademarks and anti-counterfeiting. The moderator of the section was Sergey Zuykov, Director General of the company "Zuykov and partners".

Andrei Mironov, head of the legal Department of the company "A serial" set the pace of two-hour conversation. His statement concerned the algorithms of interaction with law enforcement authorities within the frame of detection and investigation of crimes related to violation of rights to objects of intellectual property. The main conclusion that can be drawn from the speech of Andrei Mironov is that in the interests of the right holders to provide any assistance and support to law enforcement officers during the investigation. In the first place it concerns the conduct of examinations, assessment of damage caused by illegal actions, collecting of evidence and even legal assistance in the preparation of documents. This approach allows to reduce considerably terms of investigation and to improve the quality of materials provided for the court.

Speech of Sergey Zuykov the Director General of the company "Zuykov and partners" was dedicated to a review of jurisprudence on intellectual property for the year 2016 and to the issue concerning how the judicial practice changes the Russian legislation. The first thing Sergey Zuykov drew the attention of the audience on is the decision of the constitutional court of RF on the admissibility of the reduction of the amount of compensation for copyright infringement below the statutory minimum limit. This is possible if the offense is committed for the first time, the violation of the rights on objects of intellectual property is not an essential part of activities of the person and the violation wasn’t of a gross character and the amount of compensation greatly exceeds the size of right holder damages. Explaining his decision, the constitutional court of RF stated that it eliminates the possibility of violation of the constitutionally guaranteed dignity of the individual and imposing a degrading punishment. Moreover, as Sergei Zuykov said, practice shows that the court at its discretion allows to change the method of calculating compensation, as it happened in the case № A60-14066/2016.

Another significant event of judicial practice on intellectual property 2016 is that Court for intellectual property sends queries to the experts instead of the expertise. It took place in the framework of case No. SIP-295/2016 and case No. SIP-511/2016.

In addition, it is worth looking at matters of lawsuits dismissed without prejudice after the replacement of the defendant in the process on violation of the rights to the trademark or the patent, as well as the fact that the loss of the claim on the prohibition of the use of the trademark may cause its cancellation (case number A40-60158/2014).

Concerning other parallel units of the first day of the "Forum on intellectual property. Russia and the CIS countries" there were discussed protection of employer's rights on results of intellectual activity, the European single patent, the features of patenting in Russian Federation, as well as the protection of intellectual property in the field of IT.

The work of the second day of "XVIII Forum on intellectual property. Russia and the CIS countries" started with a round table dedicated to the development of franchising within a frame of the EAEU, where the President of the Russian franchising Association Agnessa Osipova told about the successful examples of implementation of franchise networks in the countries of the EEU and the peculiarities of legal regulation of this activity.

During the round table "Protecting intellectual property rights and the Internet!" moderated by Sergey Zuykov Director General of the company "Zuykov and partners", experts and participants discussed the practical issues in intellectual property arising from the regulation of companies in social networks. In addition, participants of the round table tried to find the answer to the question of whether it is possible "to break" all "mirrors" of pirate websites and to put an effective barrier in the way of parallel online sales.

Practical session of the second day of Forum was dedicated to another "hot" topic: the fight against unfair competition, including the intricacies of building relationships with FAS and to issues of unfair advertising and unfair competition using intellectual property, as well as peculiarities of registration of trademarks abroad.

Summarizing the work of "XVIII Forum on intellectual property. Russia and the CIS countries", the Deputy head of the Department of generalization of judicial practice and statistics of the Court for intellectual property rights Avak Oganesyan reviewed in the seminar, "Litigation in the area of intellectual property" the most interesting examples of judicial practice of IP over the last year.