Trademark owners protected from online infringement

The Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) has passed a law that amends the country's intellectual property legislation to protect trademarks and service marks on the Internet.

Selling goods or services with an unauthorized mark online is now unlawful, as is cybersquatting.

Previous legislation failed to recognize that the unauthorized use of a mark on the Internet to sell goods or services constitutes an infringement of the owner's rights. The amendments change this, bringing trademarks legislation into line with the law regarding the authorized use of another party's copyright works on the Internet.

The amendments also address the issue of cybersquatting - using as part of one's domain name another party's trademark. Thus, registration and use of a domain name that is confusingly similar or identical to another party's mark shall amount to trademark infringement.

Igor Svechkar and Dmytro Fedoruk, Shevchenko Didkovskiy & Partners, Kiev