Russian trademarks can now be searched in TMView

As of December 18 2013 it has been possible to search Russian trademarks via the TMView online search tool.

TMView is an online consultation tool which allows users to search almost 20 million trademarks in over 30 countries, including now over 400,000 Russian trademarks. As part of the international cooperation programme managed by the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market in collaboration with its international partners, the Federal Service for Intellectual Property of Russia (Rospatent) has made its trademark database available to TMView. Rospatent is responsible for all trademark data and for carrying out regular updates.

Russian trademarks can be searched regardless of whether they are written in Latin or Cyrillic alphabet. However, since the Russian transcription often differs from the original spelling of the trademark, users should make sure to include both versions of the mark in their search. For example, when searching for trademarks featuring the word ‘Jack’, users should search not only for ‘Jack’, but also for ‘Dzek’ (‘Джэк’ in Cyrillic), which is the Russian transcription of ‘Jack’. 'Fuzzy' searches would not help in this respect, as they would reveal only trademarks which have similar spellings, and not those which have an identical or similar pronunciation but a different spelling.

This is even more important when searching for the name of the trademark owner, because the owner’s name is always indicated in the transcribed version. For example, searching for trademarks in the name of Jack Daniel’s would require typing ‘Dzek Deniel’s’ in the trademark owner field, otherwise there would be no hits.

Through TMView, it is possible to retrieve all the relevant information about a particular trademark, including the image of the mark, the current trademark owner, the list of goods and services covered (albeit in Russian - TMclass provides just limited translation) and the current status of the trademark.

Gordana Pavlovic, Cabinet Pavlovic, Brussels and Belgrade