"Rot Front" sued the Kirov factory for compensation for brands

The Rot Front confectionery factory (part of the United Confectioners holding) sued its Kirov competitor Sladkaya Sloboda for 500 thousand rubles. for the production of waffles under the Artek and Yuzhnye trademarks, the copyright holder of which is Rot Front. In “Sladkaya Sloboda” they say that they earned less than 90 thousand rubles from waffles under the controversial brands. and consider the requested compensation to be unfounded. Experts note that the sanction is standard for similar processes, which have become more frequent in the confectionery market after positive court decisions in favor of large holdings-right holders.

The Second Arbitration Court of Appeal confirmed the legality of penalties against LLC Confectionery Factory “Sladkaya Sloboda” for the use of a registered trademark on waffles “Artek” and “Yuzhnye”. Last year, Rot Front OJSC filed a claim against the confectionery factory with the Kirov Arbitration Court. The Moscow manufacturer demanded to recover 10 million rubles from its Kirov competitor. compensation for illegal use of trademarks. Having considered all the circumstances of the case, the first court only partially recognized the claims and recovered 500 thousand rubles from the confectionery company. and about 3.5 thousand rubles. expenses for paying state duty. “Sladkaya Sloboda” tried to appeal this decision: in the appeal, the company’s management asked to reduce the amount of compensation to 20 thousand rubles, insisting on the insignificance of its guilt. As the Kirov manufacturer pointed out, the controversial trademarks were used for about a year and a half - the factory managed to produce about a ton of Artek and Yuzhnye wafers for no more than 90 thousand rubles. However, the appellate court upheld the court’s decision, confirming that Rot Front’s exclusive rights had been violated. The arguments presented in the complaint, according to the court, do not affect the specific amount of compensation, and the defendant actually “did not justify the need for the court to reduce the compensation sought.”

According to the representative of “Sladkaya Sloboda” Alexey Ichetkin, the court’s decision to recover 500 thousand rubles. from a confectionery factory threatens the enterprise with bankruptcy: “Penalties will deal a serious blow to the factory’s production line, including the cessation of the production process.” According to Mr. Ichetkin, the factory did not know that the trademark belonged to another enterprise, since “the regional enterprise simply did not have the financial ability to have a lawyer on staff who would monitor trademarks.” The defendant also notes that the trademarks “Artek” and “Yuzhnye” previously belonged to state confectionery enterprises, and OJSC “Rot Front” “successfully took advantage of this by registering the names in its name.”

Kirov confectionery market and Rot Front indicators

The director of the Nizhny Novgorod representative office of the law firm Yakovlev & Partners, Tatyana Kormilitsyna, considers the defendant’s claims regarding the illegal appropriation by Rot Front of recognizable “Soviet” brands to be unfounded, since the decision of Rospatent to register these trademarks was not challenged at the level of the chamber for patent disputes. “Although a number of holdings, now in private hands, are indeed the copyright holders of trademarks left as a legacy from the Soviet past, it is incorrect to consider the legality of their registration, since there is a decision of Rospatent. However, disputes over the production of counterfeit products, the production technology of which is simple and the turnover of which is quite large, have recently become more frequent,” notes Ms. Kormilitsyna. Intesco Research Group marketing analyst Liliya Khikmatullina recalls that the wave of claims for plagiarism of confectionery brands increased sharply after the sensational story with the Alenka brand of the Red October factory, which in June last year sued the Slavyanka confectionery factory for 320 thousand rubles. “Rot Front has been particularly successful in this - the company is quite actively looking for plagiarists of its brands,” states Liliya Khikmatullina. Thus, in 2011, Rot Front sued the Omsk confectionery factory Sladunitsa, which illegally used the Lastochka and Shkolnye trademarks. The cost of the claim was also 10 million rubles, but then it turned out that the Omsk company produced only similar-named candies “Flock of Swallows” and “School Joys”. And this year, Rot Front managed to win about 500 thousand rubles. from Vnedrenie LLC and Lyublinsky Trading Dvor LLC for illegal use of the Bird's Milk brand.

In case of violation of the law on the use of trademarks, the amount of compensation in favor of the copyright holder of the trademark can be determined at the discretion of the plaintiff, either on the basis of calculating the cost of goods produced by the violator under this trademark, or regardless of the amount of damage, explains Tatyana Kormilitsyna. Moreover, if the plaintiff chooses the second option, then he can arbitrarily assign any amount of compensation within 5 million rubles, and for this it is enough to prove the fact of production of counterfeit goods without taking into account its cost and the amount of damages. “As a rule, according to established judicial practice, the average amount of compensation for the use of one trademark is approximately 300–500 thousand rubles, so 250 thousand rubles. “This is a completely adequate amount of compensation and justified by judicial practice,” believes Ms. Kormilitsyna.

Irina Rostova, Kirov; Anna Pavlova

Half a million for waffles