Supreme Court judges shared their practice in intellectual property rights protection cases

Ihor Benedysiuk, Secretary of the Judicial Chamber for the Consideration of Cases on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights and Related Issues of Antimonopoly and Competition Law of the Commercial Cassation Court within the Supreme Court, and Kostiantyn Pilkov, Judge-Speaker of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court, took part in the 10th Anniversary Regional Seminar on Intellectual Property for Judges, organized by the Patent Office of the Republic of Latvia (LPO), the European Patent Office (EPO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). The seminar was held on September 9–10 in Jelgava, Latvia.

The participants of the seminar included judges and intellectual property specialists from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, and Ukraine, as well as representatives of WIPO and European IP organizations. During the seminar, judges had the opportunity to discuss the practice of national IP offices regarding the protection of intellectual property objects and the judicial practice in this field. Special attention was paid to the protection and enforcement of trademark rights, challenges related to “weak” trademarks, and issues concerning the protection of rights in the creation of non-traditional objects, in particular items created through upcycling — a creative process of transforming waste or unwanted materials into new, more valuable and functional works of art, clothing, décor, furniture, and other items.

Judge Kostiantyn Pilkov delivered a presentation on the Supreme Court’s case law concerning the protection of trademark rights. He spoke about a recent case considered by the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court regarding the protection of a well-known mark, as well as several recent cases reviewed by panels of the Intellectual Property Chamber of the Commercial Cassation Court, which dealt with the possibility of granting legal protection to a color as a trademark, and situations in which a designation loses its distinctiveness and becomes a generic name for certain goods. It was valuable for the judges to learn that the approach taken by Ukraine’s highest judicial authority in these important matters aligns with the practice of their colleagues from the seminar’s participating countries.