On November 21, 2025 the annual Pravo.ru “Intellectual Property – 2025” conference was conducted.
Veronika Popelenskaya spoke in lawsuits addressing session 2 “Intellectual Property Related Judicial Cases: New Challenges and Solutions in Russian Practice” on the following topic: “Judicial Twist: Supreme Court’s Stance on the Use of a Trademark in a Web-Site’s Domain Name”.
In her report Veronika analyzed the TOPFENCE trademark judicial case in which courts pondered on the question whether the mentioning of an identical mark in the Web-page URL should be regarded as the trademark use.
Veronika noted as follows: “In my opinion, in the case at hand the courts of three levels took a formalistic approach to the case. They decided that in case the trademark is used, there is an infringement of rights thereto and the respondent is to be held liable. Only when the case was brought before the Supreme Court, it said that it was more complicated than it seemed. Just mentioning of a mark included in the scope of protection of the trademark cannot be considered a qualifying factor of an infringement of the exclusive right. It is necessary to distinguish marks used as a means of informing in their commonly accepted meaning and marks used as means of individualization”.
In the conclusion of her speech Veronika focused attention on the importance of every detail in each intellectual property related case. It is essential to analyze absolutely everything because very often even a minor detail can make a reach for a success in the case.
A detailed video is available at the following link in the “Insights” section
