Protection of a Client’s Exclusive Right to a Unique Business Name of One of the Market Leaders in Rental Services

When accompanying a project to protect the rights of one of the market leaders in rental services to a business name, the law firm’s intellectual property lawyers were able to prove simultaneously in both the Arbitration Court and the Federal Antimonopoly Service that the registered legal entity with the same name illegally used the client’s business name and therefore had committed an unfair competition act.

The lawyers of the law firm proved that the client’s (plaintiff’s) business name was fully included in the defendant’s business name and held a dominant position in it. The equipment used by the defendant to provide the services and the defendant’s advertising materials were marked with a business name that was confusingly similar to the client’s business name and trademark.

As the fields of activity of the companies are identical, the lawyers succeeded in proving that the plaintiff’s and the defendant’s confusingly similar brand names mislead consumers of their services; business names did not allow the plaintiff and the defendant to be identified and led to their confusion in the economic turnover, which infringed the right to a unique name in the client’s company’s economic turnover.

The case was examined in three instances by the arbitration court up to the cassation court (the Intellectual Property Court) which upheld the law firm’s lawyers’ initial position.

Furthermore, in the context of its efforts to protect the client’s rights, the Federal Antimonopoly Service, based on a statement prepared by lawyers, recognized the defendant’s actions as an unfair competition act and penalized the defendant under administrative law.