Maxim Ali has talked with the Kaliningrad news portal about registering trademarks

The administration of a cathedral, one of the iconic sights of Kaliningrad, has registered the cathedral as a trademark. Since 2019, businesspeople who wish to use the image of the cathedral for commercial purposes are required to purchase rights to do so; the cost of which depends on the retail cost of the product and varies from 2.5 to 10 roubles per item. By February 2020, the cathedral had received more than 590 thousand roubles, which, according to an order of the church, “can only be spent on restoration and repair work of the building”.

At the request of the main news portal of Kaliningrad Klops, Head of IP / IT practice at Maxima Legal, Maxim Ali, has given an assessment of the situation. Maxim noted that if the institution is not the owner and does not have consent to register the trademark, it may be more profitable for a business to challenge the legality of the exclusive right to an image through the Chamber for Patent Disputes and the Intellectual Property Court.

“In addition, the trademark of a state institution protects only those products that are identical to or are similar to it to cause confusion. Given how diverse it is to use the image of the cathedral (for example, in different colours, angles), it is possible that companies have a chance to circumvent the trademark”, added Maxim.

To read the full article (in Russian), please see the Kaliningrad Klops website >>>