I’m not making it a point to post here a scientifically precise data , so I do not have handy start-end date of the data range processed – roughly, it was 2 month period of 2008 (February-March).

As always, the leader is United States of America – US companies filed registration of 87 marks.

OK, let’s see…companies which already have strong presence in Russia have been firming it even more with registering more and more marks:

4 by jimi hendrix (hendrix,authentic hendrix,experience hendrix,jimi hendrix) – hey Jimi, nice to see ya in Russia you’d never been before to!
3 by Xerox (xerox premier,xerox office,xerox exclusive)
1 by Gillett (showerpod)
1 by Procter & Gamble (seduisante)
1 by Mary Kay (beauty that counts)
1 by Herbalife (h3o pro)
2 by Colgate (colgate enamel protect)
1 by IBM (stop talking start doing)
1 by Bell Corp (racer)
1 by Calvin Klein underwear
1 by Universal Studios (universal channel)

Some more well known names I can’t recall (or forgot to write down) owners of:
lucky strike (I’m aware that this was the essense of American Spirit, no? Welcome to wild wild Russia old fellow!)
tide absolute (is it P&G?)
lenor summer day (is it P&G?)
old spice (is it P&G?)
cadillac (is it P&G too? …just kidding)
pizza hut
red bull

One of the most prolific trade mark registrars from US is Illinois Tool Works - they’ve been filing hulluva lots of marks in Russia.
And just for fun, here’s unsorted list of marks recently filed by US companies:

subtile,silite,devtube,2ton 2 ton,tru-bond,dev pack,fasmetal,franklynn industries,diamondkote,korrosflex,plexus,spectrasensors,oster,
restasis,ma310,ma320,ultimatic,ma3940lh,enmotion,ultima,relayfax,nd’s space,bd aqueo premium,georgia-pacific,zingspot,florange, nutrafruit,st-246,siga,kf,korn/ferry international,equifax,densit,densiphalt,ducorit,eukanuba make a good dog great,hammer+sickle,
k&w,nars,ml material london,style & co,fomrez,intermune,aspire fund,pars aspire fund,fittipaldi,lamiglas,tsc,snp,quick descent,quick pump in,clover, speed,nars,fury,geographix,banana republic

28 marks:
Japan

About half of the filed for registration in Russia japanese marks belong to well known in Russia companies:
Honda: honda pilot
Matsushita: motion focus technology
Epson: epson photo fine premia
Citizen: citizen cxw,citizen cxh
Seiko: greenmethod
Nissan: nissan gt-r,skyline,silvia,350z, gtr,370z
Daiken: daiken
Mazda: mazda

The rest of the marks I never heard about – my guess is all of these are new, but I might be perfectly wrong and some of these might have a hundred years history back in Japan : oppen,prostaff,tough under force tuf display,chergui,crystal snow,smartmesh,fractal tube,sofy,y.s.park,style works,style & co,tools of the trade,capcom

21 marks:
China (I’ll comment on these marks in my next post re possible trade mark infridgement)

16 marks:
UK
Among these 16 marks there are few already well established in Russia names such as Sobranie (tobacco) and Bentley, and I can see Sela filing thru UK couple of marks: sela softwear and sela extreme. Funny thing is that the Sela company is based in Israel and all clothes are labelled “made in China”. Sela boasts a network of popular affordable sportwear/casual clothes shops throughout Russia.

14 marks:
France
I can see three main tendencies in filing French marks:
1) some come in Cyrillics only (4 out of 14) (hmm, same number as for German registrars…interesting coincidence)
2) distinctively French sounding cliches, like baron de francois, l’officiel voyage, meribelle or la revue des montres
3) names sounding as they could have been hailing from any other country, like malvin, wilfactin, betafact and pullman hotels and resorts

11 marks:
Netherlands (filed mostly by International companies, modifications of well-known in Russia marks: axe by Unilever,Fruittella, Dove (soap).
Germany (4 out of 11 were filed in Cyrillic only)
Spain (My favorite among eleven Spanish marks is contrabandista)

10 marks:
Swiss (there was one filed by Nestle and two filed by tobacco company)

7 marks:
Canada

6 marks:
Finland
Iran (funny thing is, none of the filed marks sound distinctively Middle Eastern – they are quite dumb machine generated names, like
ave, home plus,golrang, o2, cloritex, whitex)
Austria (mm packaging,teadit,supertrans,variotrans,ruslan,metago)
Italy (kmb bank, esseti, .normaluisa, albina, monurelle...)

4 marks:
Estonia (4 modifications of aeroc)
Taiwan (gainward,mali,onpin,eee box)

3 marks:
Korea (pace,hyper,myway) – former two by Samsung
India (rosart tz, socalm, tata nano)
Cyprus (viaggio italiano, tsar-kvas, bering)
Belize (some company decided to claim three kinds of ways – eastway, westway and freeway, both in Latin and Cyrillic symbols)
Denmark (two marks in Cyrillics and one of the most recognized Danish brands – bang & olufsen’s bioline)
Brasil (rhinobaby,penalty,stara)
Sri Lanka (montegree,nature’s harmony)
Luxemburg (diamond cellular,diamond elixir,nutri calm)
Sweden (macrolane,castorx capital,superfect)
Turkey (sunset swimwear,pilsa,monica ricci) – ok, we’ll be await for a line of pseudo-italian women fashion/swimwear.
Israel (tiny love,tosaf,gci)

2 marks:
Columbia (fussione, nuestra tele)
Ireland (cystystat, cystistat)
Mexico (esperanto (that’s tequila), la morena)
Norway (norlife, vikingomega3)

1 mark:
Hungary (coberon chronos)
Cayman Islands (rumalaya)
Seychelles (alessandro manzoni) – well, we’ll be await for yet another line of pseudo-italian shoes or clothes.
Indonesia (sakura)
Sultanate of Oman (amouage)
Qatar (qinvest)
Singapore (rock)
Portugal (topcer industria de ceramica lda)
Czech (thun hotel & restaurant)
Vietnam (ngoc linh)
Thailand (cpf)

Related posts:

• Russian TM watch service – 2 weeks of February
• Some of trademark applications we’ve filed in Russia recently
• Trademark matters: you need authorization from the Russian government to use the word “Russia” in your name
• A quick guide to trademark registration in Russia
• Case study: free trademark search in Russia

Companies like Coca-Cola, which values its brand name at $34 billion, take a very dim view of trademark infringement.
So I’d better say this in the very beginning of my post: “These materials are presented here for private educational, scholarly, and research uses”, OK?

While Russian bombers continue routine patrol missions over the Atlantic Ocean, we continue our routine trademark watch patrol missions over trademark applications recently filed with Russian Patent Office.

Yesterday, while sorting through our own database of Russian trademark applications, I came across a drawing which struck my mind as resembling something quite familiar…”wait, what was that?” I thought to myself… hmm, looks like a Coca-Cola’s BonAqua. To be certain, I retrieved all BonAqua marks from RUPTO database, and whoa!

Funny thing is, that RusAqua mark was filed the very next day after BonAqua sign got registered (but not the date it was published, so it’s a pure coincidence).

RusAqua

Filed 24/oct/2007 by company from Nizhny Novgorod (where Coca-Cola has one of the largest bottlers companies in Russia).

Bonaqua

Registered in Russia by Coca-Cola Company (US)
Priority date: 2004.10.25
Registration date: 2006.10.23
Published: 2006.12.12

So, the question is – is that RusAqua confusingly similar to BonAqua mark registered by Coca-Cola? We have to wait to see whether RusAqua makes it to Official Gazette (I’ll post update later), but anyways – what’s considered to be confusingly similar?

Coca-Cola is so big, it gets mentioned in all and every trademark infrigement case studies.
For instance, Crashcourse says following on regard of “Use for similar goods or services“:

The most common type of trademark infringement probably occurs when somebody else sells a product or service under a name that in some way resembles a registered trademark, and the products in question are the same or similar to the registered products.

The main criterion here is whether the name of the product is confusingly similar to the trademark. If they are, then potential buyers might accidentally buy the wrong product, and that is exactly the kind of situation that trademark law was designed to prevent.

Determining whether two things are confusingly similar is very complex. The label of the product in question must be compared to the trademark as a whole. Even if certain elements do correspond (for example the same type of graphical symbols are used, and the various elements are arranged in a similar way) the total impression might still be different. And it is the total impression that is important, because consumers will rarely pay attention to details when making a selection of a product.

Two products are considered similar if the public would be of the opinion that the services or goods in question are of the same company or of economically linked companies… Of course, the more famous a trademark becomes, the bigger the chance that the public’s opinion would change. The trademark Coca Cola for example appears on many different products, ranging from T-shirts to duvets. Given this information, the public would easily think that somebody selling pillows with the Coca Cola trademark on it had something to do with the Coca Cola company. Based on this, the trademark holder can act against such use of his trademark.

But even Coca-Cola itself cannot avoid trademark infrigement completely, the classic exmaple would it Coca-Cola Zero launch campaign. No, I’m not talking about famous viral video “Coke sues Coke Zero for Infringement”, although it’s pretty funny by itself (if you dont get it, this is a joke, Coke is owned by the same people who make Coke Zero. They wouldn’t sue themselves, even for such a funny thing as “taste infringement” might be

I’m talking about Zero – there was dispute over the Zero name. As mentioned in Wikipedia, in Norway the Brewery Ringnes claimed that Bryggeriforeningen owns the right to Zero name. The Zero name was used on a non alcoholic beverage from 1972 to 1996.

So despite of being one of the most expensive trademarks in the world and succesfully catching up with recent trends (like becoming Coca-Cola 2.0 and supposedly “releasing” their trademark for Second Life use), it cannot completely secure itself against trademark pirates popping up in third world countries like Russia (but something tells me what Russia is not that much thrid-worldy anymore…My guess is what Russian market is one of the largest for Coca-Cola).

Coca-cola is yet to turn to our service, but they’d better not to wait too long

PS re copyright infringement and most expensive trademarks in the world… Wired recently blogged on quite a thought provoking theme “Is Copyright Infringement So Bad?” – “Where do we draw the line between artistic freedom and copyright infringement? As of now, and this is undeniable, those lines are drawn by legislators, and those legislators are paid by rich people, and copyright owners are rich.” Take a look at it.

See also:

Q: We have a trade show coming up where we will launch our new product. In anyone’s advice do you suggest we time it so that the trademark is filed only say a few days prior to the show in order for it not to be picked up by a competitor on the USPTO site. Or, on the other hand to be safe, should we just have this filed before we start spending on marketing material etc.

My colleague Susan Crane replied:

…I would file as soon as possible. You do not want to run the risk that a mark is clear today, you wait until a
tradeshow to file the applications, and in the meantime, someone has filed a confusingly similar application.

I agree with Susan. Here is a most recent case which confirms this point of view (I’m speaking of Russian trademarks, but anyways…)

On January 17th we got a request from New York advertising agency who needed a search conducted to see if an advertising tagline has been trademarked in Russia in 2 classes.

Regular search of Russian trademark database brought in exact match, BUT it turned out what the mark expired 6 months ago.
However, we strongly advised our client not to limit search to registered marks only, and search Russian trademark applications as well (they’re unavailable at RUPTO online for searching but we maintain our own database). Results were unassuring – on December 20th (that is less than 30 days prior to receiving inquiry from out client) that mark was filed again (by the same company)…

So, as you can see, our US client might have had a good chance to snap the mark if only they thought of it a little bit earlier – to my mind, you’d better file the application as soon as possible.

BTW, in Russia it’s tougher than is US – our client had a real good chance to get the mark despite the fact that it was already in use – Russia uses the “first-to-file” policy.
- No evidence of use is required upon filing of a trademark application.
- The rights to the mark will belong to the person who files the application first…even if a mark was used for a long time in Russia by another company.

PS I came across (via Sphere) Seattle Trademark Lawyer blog - Michael Atkins published an overview (1st part actually) of Foreign Trademark Law Blogs. He points out that there’s a wealth of trademark law information out there, and it’s not limited to materials written in English. and tells about couple of translation websites he uses to read those foreign blogs. I’ve been using translations websites for these very purposes over a course of years, too, and totally agree with Michael that foreign resources (in my case non-Russian) help to spot developments that may have gone unnoticed and highlight resources that allow for additional investigation. I’ll be looking forward for Pt.2 of the overview.

Related posts:

• Refreshed our Wall of Trademarks filed in Russia
• Russian patent service says YES to trademarking (RU2007719479)
• Report: Foreign Trade Mark Registrations in Russia by Country and Companies for Two Months of 2008
• Trademark matters: you need authorization from the Russian government to use the word “Russia” in your name
• A quick guide to trademark registration in Russia

US companies, as always, dominate – this week I spotted following marks:

USA
General Electric: Monogram
Qualcomm: qxdm professional
NVidia: Nvision
The Saul Zaentz Company: The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar
Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Inc: culinary creations
MySpace Inc: myspace developer platform a place for developers
Booz Allen Hamilton: booz & company
Deos Group: deos
Luxotica Inc: thermax products for a healthier indoor environment
Disney: Peter Pan
Baxter Inc: altracart, ipump, flo guard, home choice, extranil, nutrinil
BHPC Accotiates: beverly hills polo club

Germany follows – there were 3 companies active:

Sucrest: sucrest
AdLINK: affilinet, ad’link, ad’linkmedia
Volkswagen: trend & fun

Finland and Japan are next:

Finland:
Tikkurila: hybrisil
Orion Corp: divitren

Japan
Nissan: infiniti ex37
Nippon Soda Co,Ltd.: topsin

And I spotted 1 company from following countries:

(France) Kohler France SaS: maxima
(Turkey): acretan-sanovel, seidon-sanovel, celagil-sanovel
(Italy) Gruppo iltaliano vini: mahiavelli, negri, solandia
(British Virgin islands) Haskel Trading Ltd: StarWind, SunWind
(Spain) Technologia & Vitamins: maxilat, tecnovit, norpig
(Sweden) Telelogic: synergy
(UK) Allied Domecq Spirits and Wine Ltd: Leave an impression
(China) Wang Runwu: lesnye ptisy
(Hongkong) Nuoyakate Enterprise: royalcat
(Mexico) Tequila Cuervo: 200 anos

Well, and couple of geographical marks –
Rio-de-Ganeiro – to be trademarked in Russia (note G instead of J)
Krasnaya Polyana (home of Winter Olympics in Russia) – to be trademarked by a Russian company.

Related posts:

• Report: Foreign Trade Mark Registrations in Russia by Country and Companies for Two Months of 2008
• Some of trademark applications we’ve filed in Russia recently
• Case study: free trademark search in Russia
• (Updated) quick guide to trademark registration in Russia in 2009
• Trademark matters: you need authorization from the Russian government to use the word “Russia” in your name

“Putin’s persona, the Vladimir Putin brand, goes out of fashion slowly but surely. Russians are developing a new political addiction – Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s protege, his official successor. The propaganda machine has been taking great efforts to promote the new brand across Russia. The new brand, Dmitry Medvedev, has thus been outshining his predecessor – Putin.

It is worthy of note that political factors are intertwined with economic ones. Germany’s Die Welt wrote, for example, that the production of vodka under trademark Putinka has been declining in Russia. Until recently, the brand has been brining the profit of 330 million euros a year.

Hardly had Putin pronounced Dmitry Medvedev’s name, when entrepreneurs sent in their applications to Russia’s Patent to register new trademarks the titles of which play with the last name of Putin’s successor (‘medved’ means ‘bear’ in Russian). Putinka may thus been replaced with Medvedevka, Tsar Medved or Vladimir and Medved.”

It’d be interesting to dig out what trade mark applications resembling “Dmitry Medvedev” were filed recently – I’m going to run trademark watch on this Russian mark on my own request (Update: here are some results of trademark watch on Medvedev)

Related posts:

• Report: Foreign Trade Mark Registrations in Russia by Country and Companies for Two Months of 2008
• Russian TM watch service – 2 weeks of February