In a short period of time | burkina faso business directory

Trolls monitor marketplace sellers’ data and check whether their brand is registered as a trademark. If not, they apply for registration to

Rospatent, and then contact the seller and offer to rent the trademark. In case of refusal, they threaten. The name that the trolls apply for

may be completely unpassable: Rospatent will refuse registration. But their victim does not know about this…

In a short period of time, several entrepreneurs — marketplace sellers —In a short period of time contacted the Federal Patent Bureau

“Zhelezno” . All of them received letters from a law firm with a claim for illegal use of a trademark. I will tell you about specific examples.

Patent trolls attack brand

Our client trades on marketplaces under several brands. One of special lead them was not registered as a trademark. It was this brand that

caught the trolls’ attention. In their letter, they said that they had filed an application with Rospatent to register the client’s name. They also

offered to conclude an agreement on the transfer of rights.

I would like to note that the client had previously approachedIn a short period of time us with a request to register a trademark for his brand.

However, a preliminary check showed that it would be impossible to do so. In the class we needed, a previously registered mark was in the

way. And one of the elements was descriptive: it indicated the type of sale of goods, and therefore would be removed from protection. The

client decided to trade on the marketplace under his name without registering a trademark.

When we checked the information about the law firm that sent to avoid any surprises be sure to review the letter, it turned out that since the

end of January it had already filed 15 applications for trademark registration. Our client was not the only one to receive letters with offers to

“buy it and we will complete the paperwork” or “sign a license agreement with us” (and the right of exclusive license is not provided).

Here is another example of an attack. This time the letter is written not on behalf of a law firm, but from an individual entrepreneur, but the

text in it is “one to one”:

letters and what is the best way to respond to them?

First of all, I will calm you down. A submitted application is not yetIn a short period of timea certificate for a trademark. In the case of the

first designation, the trolls have no chance of registration. Rospatent will not allow this sign, but for people who do not know all the

intricacies of the process, the letter has a frightening effect. In essence, our client was threatened with a “toy gun”. It will not fire.

What did we recommend doing? Reply to the letter in such a way that “at the other end of the line” they understand that they are dealing

with a legally savvy interlocutor. Or more precisely, with an interlocutor who has secured the support of a team with 38 lawyers and five

patent attorneys on staff. On behalf of one of them, we drew up a conclusion on the illegality of blocking the cards based on the submitted

application. Let me explain. Since the application is still in the process of registration, the applicant does not have an exclusive right to the

designation. The threat in the letter is absolutely illegal!

It should be borne in mind that the marketplace administration may In a short period of time not take into account the conclusion about the

illegality of the blocking. In our practice, there have been such cases: online platforms have their own policy for handling requests.

If technical support ignores the letter, you will have to wait belgium numbers until Rospatent makes a decision to refuse registration of the

application submitted by the troll. On average, this is 3-6 months – that’s how long the examination of the designation lasts. All this time, the

cards of the disputed goods will be blocked. And, perhaps, the entire store.

After the refusal, you can resubmit your request. By sending the relevant document to technical support, you can unblock the product cards

if they are blocked at that time.

We also recommended that the client use only those designations on marketplaces for which he has exclusive rights. But this caused

problems – some of the products were labeled using the controversial brand.