Manager (Patents and Trademarks), Attorney

Manager (Law Practice)

A software company preparing its response to the Ministry of Antimonopoly and Trade of the Republic of Belarus asked for advice on whether a computer program could be a commodity.

The answer was based on the fact of the participation of the Republic of Belarus in the Nice Agreement Concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks. The Nice Agreement was concluded in 1957, revised in Stockholm in 1967 and in Geneva in 1977, and amended in 1979. The Agreement established the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Trademarks and Service Marks.

The responsible institutions of the Contracting States shall indicate the Nice Classification class numbers of goods or services for which the mark is registered in official documents and publications concerning the registration of marks.

Within the framework of the Nice Agreement, a Union has been established, which has an Assembly. The Assembly includes all Member States of the Union that have acceded to the Stockholm or Geneva Act of the Nice Agreement. Instruments of ratification or instruments of accession were deposited with the Director General of WIPO by 92 countries. In accordance with the Agreement, a Committee of Experts was also established, in which all members of the Union are represented. The main task of the Committee is to conduct a periodic review of the Nice Classification.

The right of free accession to the Agreement is granted to the Parties to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (1883).

The Republic of Belarus joined this multilateral international agreement on June 12, 1998 in accordance with the Decree of the President of the Republic of Belarus dated December 31, 1997 No. 674 "On the accession of the Republic of Belarus to the Nice Agreement on the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks...".

The software as a whole, together with computers and computer peripherals, belongs to the class 9 of the Nice Agreement and is indicated in the title of this class. Class titles indicate only general areas to which goods and services can in principle relate, and generally do not contain the names of specific goods or services. At the same time , the list of goods of the class 9 contains an indication of specific software products in the form of: 

Based on the above, it can be argued that software, computer programs are a commodity.

As for services, the services of the 42nd class of the Nice Agreement include software design, software engineering services for data processing, computer technology consultancy.