Russian IP Court

At the end of November, the Russian Federation Council approved the creation of an IP specialised Court

As we read in The Voice of Russia:

“This new judicial body will settle legal argument related to intellectual property and patent rights and will be staffed with 30 judges experiences in the relevant field as well as a number of specialists in specific fields, who will give expert opinions to help judges make a fair ruling.

Currently due to the understaffed field of intellectual property rights jurisprudence, vague knowledge of its specifics and not always present objectivity of those involved, intellectual property cases generally take up to several years to process, which is much longer than, for example, family or labor law disputes. Experts believe that the creation of such a judicial body will help offload regular courts that already have their hands full, and help process legal disputes much faster.”

Igor Sokolov, Maxim Gubanov and Leonid Zubarev report in Lexology that:

"The jurisdiction of the IP Court will include the following categories of disputes:

1. Challenges to the regulatory and legal acts of the federal executive authorities in the area of the protection of intellectual property rights, and concerning the rights and lawful interests of the applicant in the mentioned area;

2. Cases concerning the grant or termination of legal protection of intellectual property (except for copyright, neighbouring rights, and topologies of integrated microcircuits), including:

> challenges to non-normative acts, decisions and actions (including omissions) of Rospatent, federal executive body responsible for patenting genetic modifications in plants and animals2, as well as the federal executive bodies authorized to consider an application for a patent for a secret invention3 ;
> challenges to the decisions of the antimonopoly authority, recognising the acquisition of the exclusive right to the commercial branding of the legal entity, trademarks or service marks, as an act of unfair competition;
> the determination of patent holders;
> the invalidation of a patent for invention, utility model, industrial design or genetic innovations in plant varieties and animal breeds, a decision to grant legal protection to a trademark, appellation of origin and granting exclusive rights to this appellation, unless otherwise provided by law; and
> the early termination of legal protection for a trademark on the grounds of its non-use."

According to Rapsi Agency, this Court could start working on February 1, 2012.