AGP Lawyers Have Won a Lawsuit Against a Russian Alcoholic Products Importer and Distributor

AGP team has protected SKYY trademarks owned by a large foreign producer of alcoholic beverages.

A Russian importer and distributor of alcoholic products filed with the Intellectual Property Court a petition for early non-use termination of trademarks SKYY applied to famous premium vodka.

The petitioner hoped that the American trademark owner would not actively defend the case because of the reduction of the scope of its presence in the Russian market, however quite unexpectedly it encountered a fitting rebuff and steadfast assertion of the trademark owner’s rights to the disputed trademarks.

At the request and with active help of the trademark owner the AGP team managed to collect a set of requisite documents proving the due use of the trademarks under control of their owner. The current certain difficulties with the delivery of original documents from abroad have not become a hindrance to the collection of the evidence.

Furthermore, the AGP team carefully elaborated its position in backing up of the statement to the effect that the petitioner was not an interested party, and therefore its non-use cancellation action was to be dismissed.

Ultimately, at the decisive court hearing in this case, the petitioner waived its action amid the absence, by its own admission, of any chances of success.

This case is remarkable in so far as the foreign trademark owner represented by the AGP team has shown by its example to Russian companies wishing to fill the market niches of famous Western brands which have supposedly left Russia or cut down their deliveries to Russia that foreign companies are committed to protection of their rights to their trademarks and will defend them despite of any temporary external circumstances.

The client was represented by attorney-at-law Veronika Popelenskaya and lawyer Nikolai Uzhegov.