On December 9, the regular session of the Intellectual Property Advisory Office for exporters ends. Three participants, representing two enterprises, are asked two main questions and several clarifying ones
The first question came from a manager and an employee of a company, manufacturing technological equipment for agriculture, and concerned the possibilities of protecting design documentation and preventing actions for its illegal use.
The answer concerned the security systems of design documentation (hereinafter the Documentation):
1. As an object of copyright. In accordance with Article 993 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Belarus and Article 6 of the Law "On Copyright and Related Rights", the Documentation refers to works that are objects of copyright.
2. As an object of industrial property law.
3. In the form of a production secret (know-how) in the mode of a trade secret.
The manager received an answer to the possibility of protecting the Documentation with patents for an invention, utility model and industrial design. At the same time, the representatives of the Documentation developer company were familiarized with the criteria for the protectability of such objects and the terms of novelty benefits when submitting applications for an invention and utility model (12 months) and an industrial design (6 months).
The protection of the Documentation in the form of a production secret in the commercial secret mode is associated with a number of additional measures and actions at the enterprise to implement the commercial secret regime and comply with it.
The participants of the consultation session were told about the possibility of depositing information, concerning the fact that the owner of the information posses the production secret, in the Belpatentservice Unitary Enterprise of the BelCCI with the receipt of the relevant document and publication of information about it.
The participants of the session also learned if it is possible to protect design documentation from illegal use.
The second question came from a patent specialist of a well-known manufacturer of electrical equipment and concerned the possibility of obtaining protection in Ukraine for the same trademark under different procedures, both national and international.
At the same time, the national registration of the trademark ends in July 2022, and the international registration, which does not extend to Ukraine, requires territorial expansion.
The patent specialist of the enterprise received an answer that two identical marks in relation to homogeneous goods and services cannot be registered under the name of one person. Considering that the international registration applies to 8 classes of Nice Agreement, and the national Ukrainian one applies to two classes, with the latter applying to a wider list of goods of the class 7 of Nice Agreement than the international one, the specialist was recommended to extend the national Ukrainian registration for classes 7 and 9 of the Nice Agreement, and to expand the international one to Ukraine in relation to classes 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 20, 21 and 28.
