According to Ukrainian trademark law holders of trademarks enjoy protection mainly of registered trademarks. However, some protection is provided for unregistered marks too based on law of trade names.

We have made a brief monitoring of registration trademarks already in-use on Ukrainian market.

*This research is not pretending to be a scientific nor a legal research.

Online trading platforms were taken as a source of information.

For analysis were chosen goods not fallen under national restriction of online marketing, namely:

Nice Cl. 3 – perfumery and cosmetics

Nice Cl. 9 – electronics

Nice Cl. 12 – auto parts

Nice Cl. 30 – tea, coffee

From online resources were taken list of trademarks and aligned against registered (both according national and international route) and national laid-out filed applications.

The result of analysis is that in Ukraine less then half of analyzed brands undergoing registration.

On our opinion this may caused by several factors:

1. Foreign brands feels itself “relaxed” because of relatively low rate of trolling.
2. Foreign brands are considering expenses on IP protection including registration and customs activity as excessive and mostly compulsory.
3. Foreign brands neglect fact that Ukraine raising its trade balance towards EU and other foreign markets with higher share of IP in cost of production.

On our opinion this may lead to following consequences:

1. Creation grounds for trolling.
2. Potential loss of achieved positions on the Ukrainian market.
3. Creating grounds for erosion or genericization of trademarks.

ToDos:

1. Register trademark.
2. Monitor own trademark.
3. Monitor confusing and deceptive marks.
4. Be proactive and positive.