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Konstantin Voropaev

is Lead Legal Adviser at international IT company, Gett. He is a lawyer and compliance officer with extensive experience in various industries including pharmaceuticals and IT. Konstantin also handles international commercial arbitration in jurisdictions such as Russia, Central Asia and Europe, as well as civil law, competition law, contract law, corporate law, IP law and compliance.

Recent Articles by Konstantin Voropaev

European Union and Russian Approaches to Registering Cannabis Trademarks

Recent case law demonstrates that judicial bodies in the European Union and Russia have taken the stance that cannabis signs and slogans are not acceptable as trademarks as they are contrary to public interest. While the EU Courts are likely to evolve more rapidly on this issue in the near future, for now the position in both the EU and Russia is clear. The interests of the business community must be protected by governments in all countries, and business initiatives should be welcomed. But when weighing the physical and mental health of society on the one hand and business interests on the other, the priority must be the former.

Russian Court Rules Keyword Ads Generated by a Web Service Do Not Violate Trademark Rights

Businesses often resort to placing keywords in the html code of a web page, meta tags, or in contextual advertising templates for promoting their products on the internet. And in many cases, rivals successfully recover compensation from competitors who use someone else’s trademark to promote their products. But the use of other people’s trademarks is not always intentional. Recently, a Russian entity proved that there was no infringement of intellectual property rights when a trademark that was similar to another mark had been included in an advertisement by a web service. In this landmark case, the courts of all instances, including the Supreme Court, reaffirmed that key words that are automatically generated in search systems cannot infringe as defined by Russian intellectual property law. The Arbitration Court of the Stavropol region found no violations because the search results were not dependent on the actions of the defendant, were technical, and were not aimed at signifying the goods on the internet.