The IP Court completed examination of 5 related actions of Yandex LLC who attempted to challenge registrations of the trademarks “afisha”, “afisha.ru”, “afisha restaurants” (word mark and semi-figurative mark) and “mobile afisha” owned by Company Afisha LLC (member of Rambler&Co group) for print media, advertising, programs and information searches.
In all of these proceedings, the Court held that the disputed trademark applications met the requirements of law and were not descriptive or misleading. .
The Court also noted that Yandex itself had obtained registration of a similar trademark “Yandex Afisha” to be used for similar purposes and therefore Yandex abusively exercised the right to challenge other’s trademark registrations by alleging their non-compliance with law and had no lawful interest in bringing its legal actions.
Company Afisha LLC was represented by Elena Gorodisskaya, AGP partner, head of Intellectual Property.
