According to TASS, in January 2022, the Intellectual Property Rights Court (IPC) dismissed three out of five intellectual property rights claims by Yandex due to the Afisha trademark. Two meetings of the CIP on the claims of Yandex in a dispute over the use of the Afisha trademark have been postponed until February.
According to the court decision on the SIP-30/2021 lawsuit, where 65 pages are attempts to understand the interpretation of the word “Afisha” from cave paintings to publications on the Internet and polls of citizens on this term, Yandex insisted that regarding the trademark “Afisha » Rospatent violated the norms of substantive law, which led to the adoption of the wrong decision regarding the registration of this mark and restrictions on its use by other companies.
Yandex said at the CIP meetings that Rospatent unreasonably narrowly interpreted the word “Afisha”, which is dominant in the disputed trademark, exclusively as a “paper announcement of the event”, recognizing it as descriptive only for goods related to posters.
"Yandex" believes that the concept of "Afisha" should be interpreted more broadly according to the International Classification of Goods and Services than it is now done by Rospatent, since it has recently undergone changes, and information about upcoming events has long been available both from a paper poster and and on the Internet, including mobile applications.
Rospatent, in response to the statement of claim of Yandex, ask the SIP to refuse to satisfy it, pointing to the legality and validity of the contested non-normative legal act. The Intellectual Property Court supported Rospatent and rejected all the arguments in the Yandex lawsuit.
The Afisha trademark, according to Rospatent, has been owned by Afisha Company LLC since 1999.
On December 20, 2019, Rambler Group applied to Rospatent regarding the ban on the use of trademarks with the word "Afisha" by MTS and Yandex.
At the end of December 2019, Yandex filed a lawsuit against Afisha Company LLC, the subject of the lawsuit is economic disputes over civil legal relations. At the same time, Yandex won a dispute over the Yandex.Afisha trademark.
In April 2020, Rospatent partially canceled the legal protection of the Yandex.Afisha trademark after a complaint by Afisha Companies LLC and canceled the registration of the Yandex.Afisha trademark for computers, audio recording devices, information media, printed materials, advertising, wireless broadcasting , travel booking, film production, film distribution and software development.
On October 30, 2020, the intellectual property court refused Yandex to invalidate the decision of Rospatent to cancel the Yandex.Afisha trademark.
On January 15, 2021, Yandex filed five lawsuits in the intellectual property court over the Afisha trademark (SIP-26/2021, SIP-27/2021, SIP-28/2021, SIP-29/2021, SIP- 30/2021). As third parties, Afisha Company LLC (Rambler Group) and the Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent) were involved in the cases. All claims contain statements about the recognition of non-normative legal acts as invalid.
In November 2021, Rambler & Co abandoned the settlement agreement with Yandex in a dispute over the use of the Afisha trademark. Rambler has secured positive decisions in favor of its Afisha mark from Rospatent and the Intellectual Property Rights Court and now does not plan to negotiate with Yandex on the joint use of this commonly used word in trademarks.
bbabo.Net