How to patent a trademark

With the change in economic policy in 1992, the concept of “private property” has firmly entered into Russian life. Each of us clearly knows what belongs to him by right and how to protect our interests. However, this applies only to objects of tangible property. Much more complicated is the case with intellectual property. Everyone knows about it, but for some reason many do not realize that in order for the product of their intellectual activity to belong only to them, it is necessary to formalize and secure the rights to it at the state level.
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Intellectual property is so subtle, ambiguous, and difficult to control that it is often possible for anyone to steal it, and if you do not have rights duly registered for it, it may turn out that by law it will not be the owner, but the enterprising thief who managed it register first.

This is especially dangerous when the question concerns the trademark of the company. By saving time and money on patenting, you run the risk of losing your business over the years. What to do to protect yourself and your business from illegal attacks? How to protect your intellectual property?

We asked the director of the Yugpatent regional center, Alexander Georgievna KRAVCHUK, to answer these questions.

– Alexandra Georgievna, could you tell our readers what the concept of “patent” means?

– Patent – an official title of protection issued on behalf of the state by an authorized state body.

The development of the patenting institute in the North Caucasus region began with the creation in 1959, by decision of the state body of the Rostov branch of the All-Union Center for Patent Services. Since in those years there was no private property as such, the patent center was engaged in the so-called “patenting of formulas”.

That is, the inventors assigned only copyright to the idea. Now every citizen of Russia has the right and opportunity to get a patent for his business.

By the nature of our business, we constantly encounter entrepreneurs who have suffered significant financial losses, and sometimes even completely lost their business due to neglect of the need to patent their trademark. The most common scheme of fraud is the option in which several founders jointly open a company, advertise it through joint means, jointly develop a clientele, and at the moment when the company gains a certain status in the market and begins to bring serious profit, the most “smart” of the founders are patented by the “He Himself” patent law for the indicated trademark and asks the remaining co-founders to “no longer exploit the holy right of his intellectual property”. From the point of view of the law, he is right. And former partners are convinced in their own experience of the seriousness of the institution of patenting.

– What exactly can be patented?
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– Objects of industrial and intellectual property are subject to patenting, such as: inventions, utility models, industrial designs and, of course, trademarks.

I especially want to note those intellectual property that is not subject to patenting. So, according to article 4.3 of the Patent Law of the Russian Federation, the following inventions are not recognized as patentable:
scientific theories and mathematical methods;
methods of organizing and managing the economy;
conventions, schedules, rules;
methods of performing mental operations;
algorithms and programs for computers;
projects and layout plans for structures, buildings, territories;
decisions concerning only the appearance of products aimed at satisfying aesthetic needs;
topologies of integrated circuits;
plant varieties and animal breeds;
decisions contrary to the public interest, principles of humanity and morality.
– What objects are most often patented in Rostov?

– The undisputed leaders in patenting are trademarks.

– What steps must an entrepreneur go through in order to patent his trademark?
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– Before starting the patenting mechanism, it is necessary to conduct a preliminary check of the “purity” of the mark. The mark is checked for uniqueness: whether there are similar marks, whether similar names are used in them and whether the brand names contain well-known terms. There was a case when one entrepreneurial young man decided to patent the widely advertised name of one of the bank’s foreign currency deposits. Obviously, he relied on the fact that by launching the patenting mechanism, he would be able to blackmail the bank, offering them to either change the name of their deposits and lower all costs of the advertising campaign “in the pipe”, or pay him a certain amount of money.