Minsk to host conference on brand protection in Customs Union, CIS

The conference will be held with the support of the Belarusian government, the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), and the CIS Executive Committee. Partaking in the forum will be First Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Vladimir Semashko and First Deputy Chairman of the CIS Executive Committee, CIS Executive Secretary Vladimir Garkun.

The participants will also include representatives of government and non-government agencies, diplomats, businessmen, experts from the EEC, the CIS, the Eurasian Economic Community, the МРР Consulting agency (Ukraine), and the International Trademark Association (INTA), of which BelBrand is a member. Partaking in the conference also will be experts from China and Poland, brand owners, patent agents, IP professionals, and strategic partners from Russia and Kazakhstan, BelTA reports.

The conference will be held in the form of a roundtable. The participants will focus on the development of the integration processes aimed at creating a free-trade zone and a fair use of the market of goods and services with regard to national, regional, and international interests.

"The participants will be particularly interested in discussing Soviet brand names, customs and tariff regulations, legalization of parallel import, trademark right exhaustion, and participation of several of the CIS member states in the expansion of the new economic space. Special attention will be paid to the current trends in the market of counterfeits, comparative analysis of the stance of right holders, courts, and law-enforcement, customs and antitrust agencies on counterfeited goods," the BelBrand information service noted.

The organizers of the conference explained that brand owners grow increasingly concerned about the possible transformation of the concept of trademark right exhaustion in the Customs Union and the Single Economic Space, the violation of intellectual property rights, and increase in risks connected with the movement of goods in light of the legalization of parallel import.

It is not enough to create a common legal framework for IP protection. It is necessary to uniformly understand and apply the norms that already exist in the Customs Union. It is a consolidated view of the sides initiated at the level of non-commercial partnership of BelBrand, KazBrand, and RusBrand. The view will be thoroughly discussed during the forum.

"We need an efficient trade union that is able to protect interests of the states and businesses in the domestic and foreign markets. At the same time it is important for us to expand our presence in these markets and become more competitive," chairman of the organizing committee of the conference Albert Taipov said.

Taking into account the integration aspect of the problem and the practical importance of the forum, its organizers invite everyone to actively participate in the discussion of a wide range of issues that are of great importance for Belarusian and foreign manufacturers and include unfair competition, ways to overcome trade barriers, discriminatory trade conditions, and the dominant position of cooperation partners in the western and eastern directions of the Eurasian Economic Space.