Moscow changed the owner: as the largest producer of souvenir lost a million on the World Cup in football

Photo: wikipedia.org

It will be difficult for Russian entrepreneurs to earn at the World Cup, which begins next week. One of the most famous Moscow souvenir brands Heart of Moscow was faced with the fact that it cannot start on sale a collection of souvenirs specially designed for the championship. It turned out that the phrase “Moscow 2018” is a trademark, and the rights to it belong to FIFA. This was the founder and owner of the company Alexander Elsesser wrote on his Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/elzesser/posts/10156208697110560

Details

The phrase “Moscow 2018” was registered as a trademark back in 2014, follows from the Rospatent database. The copyright holder is FIFA, registration will be valid until 2022. The FIFA trademarks also include the phrases “Russia 2018”, “Kaliningrad 2018”, “Kazan 2018” and all other cities where the 2018 World Cup matches will be held.

The license to use these trademarks costs $ 10 thousand, but to sell souvenirs, even having paid this amount, can only be with the official graphics of the championship. “We concluded that any products about football, even stickers of“ pains for ours ”with balls and a tricolor, can be recognized as counterfeit,” says Elsesser.

• FIFA requirements are contrary to the Civil Code, where it is said that geographical names cannot be registered as a trademark, says the head of the Artpatent agency Grigory Busarev: “For example, when we recorded a trademark for the Universiade in Kazan, we recorded not just the name of the city as a place and time of the event.”
• But in Rospatent The Bell explained that the procedure for registering trademarks for FIFA is not regulated by the Civil Code, but by Federal Law No. 108 of 2013 , in which special conditions are established for FIFA.
• This law really reduces the terms of registration and simplifies procedural points, but the provisions of the article of the Civil Code on trademarks are not canceled, Busarev insists, so there are big questions for Rospatent about the legitimacy of registration of simple names of cities.
• As follows from the FIFA application itself on the Rospatent website, the phrase “Moscow 2018” is registered as “invented with a fantasy character”. The website of the Patent Gardium Bureau says that in the same way, for example, the Tavria trademark was registered - this is how the Crimean Peninsula was called in the Middle Ages, but now this toponym does not cause an association with the Crimea among consumers, therefore, an exception was made for it as a “fictional and fantasy”.

The Russian championship is no exception, FIFA acts in the same way in all other countries where the championships are held, says the interlocutor of The Bell in Rospatent. The representative of FIFA at the time of publication did not answer the request of The Bell.

The losses of Heart of Moscow from the development of the collection to the World Cup amounted to about 1 million rubles, said Elsesser The Bell. Now the company is considering the possibility of challenging the FIFA rights to a trademark in court, he says. In the response to the company's request, the representative of FIFA wrote that both parts of the trademark are protected - that is, both Moscow and 2018. “In the response of the official representative of intellectual property FIFA, we were recommended to refrain from using any marking that has a direct or associative connection with the championship without the consent of FIFA,” says Elsesser.

“Producers of souvenirs really found themselves in a difficult situation, because federal law does not allow the use of FIFA symbols and in general any symbols that can be associated with the championship. At the same time, the law is maximally vague, it is not clearly spelled out, which can be recognized as an association, ”Busarev confirms.

Heart of Moscow is a brand that released a series of badges for the Moscow Zoo, together with the Tretyakov Gallery - badges with masterpieces of the Russian avant -garde, as well as icons dedicated to the Soviet space and flight of Yuri Gagarin. In addition, the company had collaborations with Russian and Pushkin museums and VDNH. Elsesser's revenue, according to SPARK-Interfax, in 2015 amounted to 7 million rubles, net profit-5 million rubles.

Anastasia Yakreva