The Intellectual Property Week opened on April 21. The event took place ahead of the International Intellectual Property Day and was organized by IP CLUB, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, and EPAM.
The opening day program included a panel discussion, Significant Precedents in IP/IT, that was attended by Yekaterina Yevteyeva, Legal Adviser of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and Executive Secretary of IP CLUB, Yekaterina Kalinicheva, Partner, Director of Intellectual Property Online Protection at Semenov&Pevzner and Vice President of IP CLUB, Maria Samartseva, Adviser, Director of Intellectual Property at Dyakin, Gortsunyan and Partners, and Senior Attorney at Alrud Yelizaveta Kostyuchenko. IP CLUB President Marina Rozhkova and Director of the Coordination Center Andrey Vorobyev co-moderated the discussion.
Pavel Spitsyn, Director of the Russian Representative Office of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), offered his welcoming remarks.
During the panel discussion, Yekaterina Yevteyeva spoke about a dispute around the besogon.tv domain. This case was of interest because, at the time of consideration, both the registrant and registrar of the domain name were foreign entities while the .TV domain itself is the country-level domain of Tuvalu. The case raised the issue of dishonest competition in the actions of the domain name registrant. The Supreme Court indicated that a violation could be established even if the domain does not actually resolve to any website. Consequently, in the new round of case consideration, the rights holder’s claims were granted although it remains questionable whether the ruling is actually enforceable.
Yekaterina Kalinicheva briefly described the case of singer Bianca vs. Koala Music. Maria Samartseva spoke about a dispute concerning the Doctor Liza trademark that matches the alias of Dr. Yelizaveta Glinka who died in an airplane crash in 2016. The trademark has been a subject of litigation for the past several years as the late doctor’s husband and son are disputing the brand ownership with the Doctor Liza Fair Help Foundation.
Senior Attorney at Alrud Yelizaveta Kostyuchenko rounded up the panel discussion with several cases by Sony that concern restricting Russian users’ access to PlayStation Store.
EPAM Partner and Director of Intellectual Property / TMT Pavel Sadovsky, Deputy Director for Legal Affairs at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Sergey Kopylov and Director of the Patent and Invention Department at SPLAT Global Maria Olkhovskaya also participated in the discussion.
The panel discussion continued with the IP&IT LAW 2025 awards ceremony for winners of the 10th National Youth Contest of IT and IP Law Research Works organized by IP CLUB and the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ under the auspices of WIPO.
The contest received around 90 research works by young researchers from 18 Russian regions and the CIS.
Following evaluation by a jury consisting of IP and IT law experts, several researchers and their works were highly praised for the creativity, originality and thoroughness of research, constructive ideas and suggestions:
- The first prize and a paid internship with EPAM went to Alexander Osokin (The Impact of AI on Database Legal Protection in the Modern World, Lomonosov Moscow State University)
- The second prize and a special prize from Semenov & Pevzner went to Ilya Titov (Accountability of Marketplaces for Violating Exclusive Rights in Russia and Abroad, Patrice Lumumba RUDN University)
- The third prize and a special prize from Alrud went to Oleg Kulikov (The Impact of Technology on Extending the Range of Protected Intellectual Property, Sergey Alekseyev Private Law Research Center, Moscow)
The contest winners will receive monetary prizes from the organizers and will have an opportunity to get an internship with the Intellectual Property Rights Court. The jury recommended the winning research works for publication in the Intellectual Property Rights Court Journal.
The event concluded with a book launch. Marina Rozhkova presented Objects of Civil Rights: Legal Research in the Digital Age, the final edition of the 20-year-long project under her supervision, Modern Law Analysis.
