On July 25, 2025, Russian IP Court issued a Decision on case No. SIP-227/2025, supporting Rospatent's decision to refuse to grant legal protection to the trademark of a Swedish company.
The Court concluded that a specific element included in the disputed trademark does not have a verbal character and original graphic execution, therefore it cannot be granted legal protection on the basis of paragraph 1 p. 1 art. 1483 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.
Patent attorneys of «A.Zalesov & Partners» Patent & Law Firm Anastasia Kiriukhina and Julia Kolomytseva left comments on the Court's Decision at the request of the «Attorney’s Newspaper».
According to Julia Kolomytseva, the Court decision touches upon an issue in relation to which neither the decision of Rospatent nor the IP Court decision can be correctly predicted. According to the expert, the key point that could influence the conclusion on the presence of distinctiveness of the combination of verbal elements was the assessment of the SCC element, since it is aimed at individualizing the goods and services of the copyright holder (Stockholm Chamber of Commerce). However, the applicant did not dispute the unregistrability of any of the elements.
Head of the Trademark division of «A.Zalesov & Partners» Anastasia Kiriukhina noted that the case concerns a widespread case in practice of attempting to register as a trademark a combination of non-protectable elements that are neither an abbreviation nor its decoding, nor do they represent an original composition in the form of verbal and pictorial elements united by a single concept or create a qualitatively different level of perception from the resulting combination as a whole. In her opinion, in the absence of convincing counterarguments from the applicant, the conclusion of the Russian IP Court appears to be legitimate and justified.
For the full text of the article and commentary (in Russian) please refer to the link.