Maxim Ali has discussed with Pravo.ru how decisions of the Supreme Court have influenced judicial practice in intellectual property

On 23 April 2020, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation approved clarifications on the application of the fourth part of the Civil Code, codifying the established judicial practice on intellectual property. The document is already widely used by lower courts and is cited in almost every court decision. At the request of Pravo.ru, the Head of the IP/IT practice at Maxima Legal, Maxim Ali, commented on how the ruling has changed judicial practice.

In the determination, the Plenum of the Supreme Court finally gave commercial courts authority to consider disputes on intellectual property, including domain disputes. According to Maxim Ali, this approach will make life easier for lawyers: previously, deciding which court that should consider the dispute was difficult to determine.

The resolution of the Plenum emphasizes that the law does not provide for a special procedure for recognizing actions to register a trademark as an abuse of a right. However, this does not mean that the Court has blocked the possibility of seeking to establish such an abuse. This possibility remains when challenging the decisions of Rospatent or when considering a claim for the protection of the right to a trademark.

As Maxim Ali underlined, a number of controversial issues remained unexplained. “The well-known dispute between VKontakte and Double raised a number of problematic issues. What are the limits of responsibility of a software developer through which illegal interaction with a database occurs? What is the “non-essential part” of data that can be used by third parties and the “normal” use of the database? We cannot find the answers to these questions in the resolution, therefore, we must hope for the further clarifications”, summed up Maxim.

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