Registration of appellations of origin opens producers to additional possibilities in marketing of the goods, since such registration can be a sign of high quality and reputation of the goods.

One peculiarity of the right to an appellation of origin is the fact that it is not exclusive: that is, several different persons or companies can simultaneously have the same rights to use the name for their goods. However, all these persons or companies will have to prove that they are genuine producers of unique goods on the same territory. An association of manufacturers as a separate organization dedicated to protection of the appellation of origin can also be a sole owner of the registration.
It is possible to obtain protection for appellations of origin and geographic indications not only in the country of origin, but also abroad. Usually, in this case it will be necessary to provide documentary proof of the existing rights in the country of origin. An international application under the Lisbon System is also a handy registration tool, available in 43 jurisdictions, which cover up to 72 countries.

In the process of registration there may be issues arising due to different legislative requirements for processing and protecting appellations of origin in different countries. PATENTICA is always ready to consider any minute details and find the right strategy to obtain registration in order to protect the owner’s rights.

We are here to help you navigate the complex world of IP law and align your business strategies and business models with your IP strategies to not only protect your ideas but also to achieve competitive advantages and sustainable business growth.

Our team of experienced patent and trademark attorneys will guide you through the intricacies of IP law. We are not just legal experts, we’re partners in your business success who help you to make sure that investing in IP creates the value for your company, which exceeds the investment by an attractive margin.

As an essential part of our business consulting services we offer a wide range of related IP services, including:

• IP Strategy Development: Our experts work closely with you to develop tailored IP strategies that align with your overall business goals, ensuring that your IP investments are strategic and yield maximum returns.
• IP Portfolio Management: We assist you in identifying, protecting, and managing your intellectual property assets, ensuring that your ideas are secured and ready to fuel your business’s growth by giving you exclusivity position on the market .
• Patent, Trademark, Design, Know-how and Copyright Services: From patent applications to trademark registrations and copyright protection, we handle all aspects of IP law to safeguard your creations and innovations.
• IP Due Diligence: Whether you are engaging in mergers, acquisitions, or partnerships, we conduct comprehensive IP due diligence to assess the value and potential risks associated with intellectual property assets.
• Enforcement and Litigation: In cases of infringement or disputes, our seasoned litigators will vigorously defend your IP rights and pursue legal action when necessary.

Contact us today to discover how we can help you align your business strategies with your IP strategies to unlock growth, innovation, and a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

Patent Searches: Unveiling Opportunities, Mitigating Risks

Embarking on a new invention or technology is an exciting journey, but it’s essential to tread carefully to avoid infringing on existing patents. Our patent search services are designed to provide you with a comprehensive overview of the prior art landscape, enabling you to make informed decisions about the feasibility of your innovation. Our skilled researchers meticulously comb through various patent databases, scientific literature, and relevant resources to identify patents that might impact your invention’s patentability.

Our patent search offerings include:

• Prior Art Searches: Discovering existing technologies and publications that may affect the main patentability criteria such as novelty and inventive step. This type of search is a necessary preliminary step for drafting good quality patent application for the submission to the patent office.
• Invalidity Searches: Evaluating the validity of an existing patent that might be impacting your ability to operate freely in the market. As a result of this type of search you may take a decision on filing an opposition to revoke the conflicting patent, or negotiate a license with the patent owner.
• FTO & Infringement Searches: Assessing whether your product intended for launch could potentially infringe on existing patents, helping you avoid costly legal disputes. Our FTO analysis services empower you with the knowledge you need to confidently bring your inventive products to market. Our legal experts work closely with you to understand your goals and objectives, conducting thorough assessments to identify any potential obstacles that could arise from existing patents.

Our FTO analysis process includes reviewing existing patents and technologies to pinpoint any potential risks to your freedom to operate, evaluating the level of risk associated with your innovation, providing you with a clear understanding of potential challenges, and developing tailored strategies to navigate around existing patents or negotiate licenses, allowing you to move forward with confidence.

At Patentica, we pride ourselves on our commitment to excellence, precision, and innovation. Our passion for intellectual property law, combined with our deep understanding of the intricacies of patent searches and FTO analysis, sets us apart as a trusted partner in safeguarding your intellectual property assets. Please feel free to contact us for greater detail.

When undergoing examination in designated countries by the national Patent and Trademark Offices, pending international trademarks can be rejected on various absolute and relative grounds, such as similarity to prior trademarks, misleading nature, vague terms in the lists of claimed goods/services, lack of distinctive capacity and other grounds for refusal stipulated by the legislation.

At PATENTICA we analyze refusals, assess chances and offer balanced strategies for responding to the refusal in a way ensuring the shortest path to the decision to grant of protection in the country of the applicant’s interest.

If the term to handle a provisional refusal has already expired or in case the response has not been effective, it is not the reason to give up: final refusals can usually be further appealed, and PATENTICA will be here to help. For example, in Russia the first stage of the appeal process is done outside of courts, delegated to the Rospatent division – the Chamber for Patent Disputes.

Both pre-filing and post-registration searches are important steps along any trademark timeline. Thorough trademark searches form part of broader freedom-to-operate researches preceding launch of products on the local market, while simple surveillance has proven effective against trademark dilution, bad faith registrations and confusion on the market.

PATENTICA conducts identical and similarity searches with legal opinions, as well as searches by a company’s name and monitoring with advice on further proceedings against pending or registered trademarks.

Many jurisdictions do not require proof of trademark use either on the application stage, or after the trademark is registered. However, it is often stipulated that if a trademark has not been used for a set period (for example, three years) after registration, any interested party can cancel this trademark for non-use. 

The procedure of non-use cancellation is not always straightforward. For example, the Russian legislation requires sending a pre-trial offer to the trademark owner before one can file an actual non-use cancellation lawsuit. Such an offer gives the rightholder a chance to voluntarily renounce rights to a trademark, transfer it to the interested party or, as we usually offer as an alternative, to reach a co-existence agreement. In case a pre-trial settlement is for some reason impossible, a request to cancel a non-used trademark is filed with the Russian Intellectual Property Court.

PATENTICA acts on both sides of non-use cancellation proceedings through both mediation and litigation.

Before involvement into the procedure, PATENTICA offers investigation of use as a tool for assessing the perspectives of cancellation, evaluates ways of peaceful arrangements advantageous for the client and analyses documents required for successfully representing the plaintiff or defendant in cancelling or keeping the trademark alive.

Competitive edge should never ever be gained at the expense of others. Sometimes imitation of third-parties’ copyright, means of individualization, industrial designs, utility models and inventions is so convincing, it might entice consumers from actual manufacturers and lead to considerable losses. Another widespread type of unfair competition is obtaining rights for IP objects. 

At PATENTICA we have an eye for detecting features of unfair competition and choosing suitable evidence that will be recognized by the competent authorities as sufficient for labelling adverse party’s tricky ways an act of unfair competition – if prior mediation does not yield satisfying results. 

We also work with the violations of advertising legislation, which usually goes hand in hand with breach of competition law.

Getting hold of a registration certificate or a patent is rewarding, but it is only the beginning of making your intellectual property valuable. Proper post-registration surveillance of the market for the purpose of enforcement is crucial from two perspectives: protection of customers from low quality imitations and prevention of revenue and reputation damages for the IP owner. For trademarks, such actions also shield from dilution. 

Enforcement procedure usually begins with a cease and desist letter, and in some cases diplomatic mediation suffices. If it does not, we offer balanced strategies of acting through court or antimonopoly authorities, calculate compensations to be charged from the defendants, work on persuasive arguments, order investigations from experts in the field, if required, and guide you through the whole process. We work with enforcement of all registrable and non-registrable according to the local legislation types of intellectual property, including trade secret misappropriation and copyright infringement.

We also act on the other side of the fence – we act on behalf of entities on the receiving side of claims. We seek ways to prove that no infringement has actually taken place, propose counter-action procedures, such as opposition or revocation, put forward peaceful settlement or co-existence proposals or decrease the amount of compensation within a court case. 

Holders of patents for plant varieties and animal breeds can benefit from granting licenses to farming enterprises for using agricultural innovations. The name of a patented variety or breed is also protected and cannot be used for another selection product. Generally, to be granted a patent, a selection achievement should comply with the criteria of novelty, distinctness, uniformity and stability. The validity period of patents for grapes, ornamental trees, fruit crops and forest species can reach up to 35 years.

Examination procedure depends on the variety applied for protection in a particular jurisdiction. For example, the Civil Code of the Russian Federation allows performing the examination based on the data furnished by the applicant in accordance with the national standards or on DUS (Distinctness, Uniformity and Stability​​​​​​​) testing results obtained by a specialized foreign authority. In most cases, the procedures of examination and patent grant do not require submitting plant or animal material. However, variations of procedure for different cases, the absence of facilities for electronic communication and further peculiar requirements of the local regulations in this field may hinder the procedure for an applicant. Patentica’s specialists have extensive experience of patenting a range of varieties and will be glad to assist you with the process.

There are additional local requirements to consider. For instance, in order to grow or propagate a culture in Russia, it is obligatory that it is registered with the National Registry of Allowed Varieties. The procedure of registration includes DUS examination and examination for serviceableness, including examination of the variety for its capacity to be cultivated in regions with different climate conditions. This examination can also be performed based on data provided by the applicant. Our specialists can provide you more details regarding these matters and share their experience to support you throughout the application filing and examination process in the country of the applicant’s interest.

The reason for the patent term extension tool introduction is the complicated and lengthy procedure of clinical trials and obtaining special marketing authorization preceding the actual launch of pharmaceuticals and agricultural goods, which substantially reduces the term of profiting from a patent: it can actually take decades for a drug to pass muster with the federal authorities and be brought to the market. 

Patent term extension is also available under the Eurasian Patent Convention for Eurasian Patents in the following states in addition to Russia: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkmenistan, the only exception being Tajikistan. 

As for the PCT, we assist clients with filing international applications, responding to the International Search Reports (ISR) and the Written Opinions of the International Search Authority (WOISA) as well as with entering the National Phase, which includes filing formal documents, paying official fees, preparing and submitting a translation of the application to the national office, such as Georgian Patent Office, Russian, Ukranian or Uzbek Patent Office, and handling Office Actions, if any. 

The PCT application can subsequently be entered either into National phase in one or several countries to mature finally into a national or several national patents, or into Regional phase, such as Eurasian regional phase, whereupon as result of examination, a Eurasian patent will be granted to simultaneously cover all EAPC Contracting States including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russian Federation, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. It is worth noting that a EA patent does not require translation into several languages, while the renewals fees are payable to the EAPO in amount cumulative of the amount of renewal fees in each country where the patent is intended to maintained. 

We provide the following types of patent search:

Patent databases

Our search strategy produces high-quality results: