Maxim Ali spoke about intellectual property issues that are becoming more acute in the foreign economic activity

On 27 May, Maxim Ali, Head of the IP/IT Practice at Maxima Legal spoke at the conference “Currency Contracts in Existing Economic Realities” organized for companies participating in foreign economic activity by Bank Saint Petersburg Petersburg and Expert North-West Information and Analytical Magazine.

Maxim reminded that the Russian mechanisms of protection of intangible assets do not ensure protection of trademarks, product design or technical secrets of production outside the country. Moreover, due to the difference in legal regulation when entering foreign markets, a domestic company may itself be an infringer of someone else’s intellectual property.

“We usually believe that in order to impose a fine or criminal liability, it is necessary to do something deliberately bad, very bad faith. But in the case of intellectual property rights, it is enough to be negligent. For example, you enter the U.S. market and are convinced that the rights to software algorithms are not patented. And in the United States this is not the case, and the algorithm you put in your computer program can be patented by someone else. Whether you knew about this patent or not, these are your problems,” the expert stressed.

At the same time, Maxim pointed out that usually “intellectual property” is associated with high-tech sphere, while in fact it is an integral part of any business.