The direct transliteration of foreign words is not always an adequate solution, since there are often differences in the pronunciation of a word and the way it is transliterated. Therefore, in order to ensure a meaningful Cyrillic domain name, it may be necessary to register a proper local domain under .rs before registering the corresponding .срб domain. For example, Google is pronounced and written in Serbian as Gugl (Latin) or Гугл (Cyrillic), so it is advisable to register gugl.rs first, and than apply for гугл.срб, which is in local terms a more adequate domain name than гоогле.срб.

After the initial registration phase, everyone will be able to register any number of available .срб domains, as of July 27, 2012.

Registration is possible under .срб as well as under the following extensions:

• .пр.срб for commercial entities
• .орг.срб for organizations
• .обр.срб for educational institutions
• .од.срб for individuals
• .упр.срб for administrative bodies
• .ак.срб for academic network

Non-Serbian nationals, both companies and individuals, may register a .срб domain, but must provide a local administrative contact.

For more information, please visit the RNIDS page on the .срб domain or contact Svetlana Gavrilovic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: RNIDS; CRI Domains d.o.o.

In case the patent applicant or holder fails to comply with deadlines set by the Serbian IPO, they are under certain circumstances entitled to request continued processing of the corresponding patent application or registration within three months from the receipt of the official notification informing that the deadline for taking action has expired.

The new patent law for the first time includes provisions on the restoration of the priority right. Namely, the applicant can file a request for the restoration of the priority right within two months following the expiration of the priority period, but before the completion of the technical preparations for the publication of the patent application.

One of the major novelties is the possibility to appeal an IPO decision before the government, within 15 days from the date of the receipt. The administrative proceedings may be instituted against the government’s decision within 30 days from the date of the receipt of the government’s decision.

The new patent law prescribes that a patent application may be examined in an expedited procedure upon the request of the court, market inspection or customs authority, if judicial proceedings, inspection surveillance or customs procedures have been initiated. This urgent procedure may be requested in the event of an infringement litigation arising from the published application; along with request, the applicant is required to furnish evidence that the court proceedings for infringement terminated the finality of a competent authority on the application.

In case of an infringement action arising from the published application, the court will stay the civil proceedings until the IPO’s issuance of the final decision. If the patent revocation proceeding is requested before the IPO, the court shall stay the proceedings on an infringement action initiated by the right holder or the holder of an exclusive license, or on an action for the establishment of the right to protection initiated by the inventor or his successor in title or employer, or on an action for the recognition of the inventor’s status.

The new law introduces a novelty in the patent granting procedure. Once an application is submitted and the formal requirements have been fulfilled, the IPO is obliged to invite the applicant to request the patent search and to pay the corresponding search fees within one month of the invitation. When it receives the search request, the IPO will conduct the search on the basis of the claims, with due regard to the description and the drawings, and forward it to the applicant, who is entitled to request substantive examination within six months of the receipt of the search report. The report will be published together with the patent application in the Official Gazette or separately.

Provisions on third-party observations are explicitly stipulated in the new law. The law provides the possibility for the interested parties to present written observations concerning the patentability of the invention, after the patent application’s publication. The IPO is however not obliged to take such observations into consideration and the interested party will not be considered a party to the proceedings.

The new patent law prescribes that all supplementary protection certificate (SPC) provisions will enter into force on July 1, 2013.

The government body responsible for public health is entitled to grant the SPCs or the compulsory licenses for the manufacture and sale of pharmaceutical products intended for export to countries dealing with public health problems, to any party whose request fulfills the requirements outlined in the new law. When deciding whether to grant a compulsory license, the government must take into account the Decision of the General WTO Council of 30 August 2003 on implementation of paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and public health. The validity of the provisions regulating the compulsory licenses related to the manufacture of pharmaceutical products for export to countries with public health problems will cease on the day of Serbia’s accession to the EU.

For more information, please contact Tijana Milijanovic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: The local text of the law

• Copy of the trademark application as filed;
• Documents evidencing that a civil or a customs action was duly initiated;
• Documents evidencing trademark rights and the alleged infringement of such rights;
• Proof of payment of the official EUR 50 (USD 63) fee per trademark, regardless of the number of classes.

The accelerated examination request may be submitted at any time after the filing date, as no time frame is specified. The IPO will decide to grant or reject the accelerated examination request within 15 days from the filing date. The examination is to be performed under the provisions of the Law on Trademarks.

For more information, please contact Jelena Jankovic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: Kosovo IPO

“Anheuser-Busch InBev and BMP have settled all their trademark disputes and Anheuser-Busch inBev has acquired the rights to BMP’s Budweiser trademarks,” a spokeswoman for Anheuser-Busch InBev stated for the beverage industry news and information portal just-drinks.com on January 12, adding that, “BMP’s former owners will own the BMP brewing operations in the Czech Republic and the non-Budweiser trademarks”.

The number of trademarks that Anheuser-Busch InBev acquired from BMP and the number of European countries affected by this deal have not been disclosed.

Anheuser-Busch InBev claims that the above is unrelated to Budejovicky Budvar and concerns BMP’s Budweiser intellectual property rights only.

For more information, please contact Aleksandra Pavlovic at our Macedonia office.

Source: Beverage industry portal just-drinks.com

The court ruled that importing branded goods without the trademark owner’s consent violates exclusive trademark rights and prohibited the online shop from offering Longines watches for sale.

Longines demanded compensation for damages in the amount of approximately USD 159,000 (EUR 122,000) from Bestwatch.ru and USD 3,200 (EUR 2,460) from Adelia. The court upheld the claim against Adelia in full and reduced the compensation from Bestwatch.ru to USD 96,000 (EUR 74,000).

Both defendants have filed appeals at the 13th Arbitration Court of Appeals in Saint Petersburg, but did not provide evidence of payment of the appeal-filing fee. For this reason, the appeal has been suspended until February 6, 2012.

In recent years, the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation has been pushing to legalize parallel import by amending the Article 1487 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, which clearly prohibits it. The Russian government will reportedly consider this issue in the spring of 2012.

For more information, please contact Yuriy Karlash at our Ukraine office.

Source: The Supreme Arbitration (Commercial) Court of the Russian Federation

• On the Judicial System of the Russian Federation;
• On Arbitration Courts in the Russian Federation;
• On the Status of Judges in the Russian Federation;
• The Arbitration Procedure Code of the Russian Federation;
• The Civil Code of the Russian Federation.

The jurisdiction of the IP court will inter alia include the following:

• Pre-term termination of trademark’s legal protection due to non-use, now under the jurisdiction of the Patent Disputes Chamber of the Russia’s Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Patents and Trademarks (Rospatent);
• Challenging the antimonopoly authority’s decisions under which the acquisition of the exclusive right for means of individualization of a legal person, production, works, and services and enterprises was recognized as an act of unfair competition;
• Determining patent holders;

Disputes related to copyright, neighboring rights and topologies of integrated microcircuits will be settled by other courts, as it was before the amendments were introduced. However, the new IP court will act as the court of cassation for such cases.

For more information, please contact Yuriy Karlash at our Ukraine office.

Source: Russian government’s website

According to Ukraine’s State Inspectorate for the Quality Control of Medicines, 2.5 million substandard, non-registered or counterfeit packages of medicine were sold in Ukraine in 2010; almost 50 percent of the counterfeit drugs were obtained through the Internet.

For more information, please contact Maya Kryvoshei at our Ukraine office.

Source: National Radio Company of Ukraine

More information is to follow soon.

For more information, please contact Taras Kulbaba at our Belgium office.

Source: Polskie Radio

The amendments also introduce the possibility to reproduce a literary work in whole for personal, non-commercial purposes, if the work has been out of print for minimum two years. Before the amendments, such reproduction was limited to excerpts of a copyrighted work. Along those lines, the law now more adequately regulates the widespread practice of illegal copying of textbooks used for educational purposes.

Furthermore, the section of the law related to the protection of databases is regulated in more detail. The law precisely prescribes what this protection encompasses as well as the rights and obligations of the authorized user of the database.

The amendments have also been introduced to provisions regulating the use of optical discs in proceedings before courts or other authorities. Namely, before the amendments, the law prescribed that a work on the optical disc could be reproduced for the said purposes, but such reproduction was practically impossible as optical discs are protected with relevant technical measures. With the amendments, the holder making use of the technical protection measures is obliged to remove or alter the measures in order to enable persons entitled by the law to have access to the content.

Droit de Suite, author’s right to be informed of and to receive remuneration for the resale of the work, is now regulated in more detail. It is defined what is considered to be an original piece of art. Also, the law now clearly prescribes that the provisions should be applied to any transactions involving those who professionally trade with artistic works, such as showrooms, art galleries, auction houses and similar institutions.

For more information, please contact Ana Stojanovic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: The local text of the law

According to the new copyright law, the Office’s main activities are to:

• License copyright collective societies;
• Revoke licenses issued to copyright collective societies;
• Supervise the activities of copyright collective societies;
• Provide the needed information to authors and other copyright owners with respect to the rights covered by the law;
• Keep abreast of international legal developments and provide recommendations with regard to copyright and related rights.

The new law excludes the possibility for copyright holders to deposit the copies of the works and the subject matter of the related rights works with the Office. This was possible under the former law and was done in order to preserve evidence or for any other reason.

For more information, please contact Jelena Jankovic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: Kosovo IPO

A representative of the State Intellectual Property Service of Ukraine noted that this draft law will implement a special scheme according to which Internet access will be restricted to a specific item, e.g. the infringing movie, not to the whole website.

For more information, please contact Dina Kryvoshei or Maya Kryvoshei at our Ukraine office.

Source: Local text of the draft law; Liga.net, Ukrainian news portal

The denunciation will not affect the already granted Eurasian patents or applications designating Moldova filed before April 26, 2012.

The EAPC, in force as of August 12, 1995, is an international patent law treaty ratified by Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

For more information, please contact Masa Lopicic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: WIPO, PTC newsletter

According to the USPTO, the agreement is beneficial for the US applicants because the cost of search and examination will be lower and the process faster. A search carried out by Rospatent as the ISA will cost USD 415 (EUR 325). Applicants selecting Rospatent as the IPEA will pay a preliminary examination fee of USD 171 (EUR 134), as well as a handling fee of USD 219 (EUR 172). When the International Search Report (ISR) is not prepared by Rospatent, the fee will be USD 255 (EUR 200).

For more information, please contact Jelena Jankovic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: USPTO

The Strasbourg Agreement, also known as the International Patent Classification (IPC) Agreement, will enter into force on January 6, 2013.

For more information, please contact Jelena Jankovic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: WIPO

For more information, please contact Jelena Jankovic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: WIPO