Fighting counterfeit products on marketplaces
MAGENTA Legal continues to support an important project in the field of intellectual property protection. The lawyers are fighting against counterfeit products sold on Russian marketplaces. Vedomosti reported about the project:
On 8 August 2024, board game publisher Economicus filed 15 lawsuits with arbitration courts in various regions of Russia over the distribution of counterfeit products, according to an arbitration case file. The defendants - individuals, individual companies and legal entities (Podarki vsem OOO, Chainfrost OOO, etc.) - supply unlicensed copies of the board game Bunker to marketplaces, Fedor Korzhenkov, CEO and owner of Economicus, told Vedomosti. The amounts claimed in the lawsuits range from 43,400 to 22 million rubles – a total of 43 million rubles, according to court documents.
The Bunker game, published by Economicus, occupies a leading position among the company's products. As Korzhenkov explained, on the front of the game's original box there is the publisher's logo in the bottom left-hand corner and the name of the game, Bunker, in the middle.
During the inspection purchases, it was found that the counterfeit products of the game illegally use the Bunker trademark on the front of the packaging, while the Economicus logo is missing in the bottom left corner. Korzhenkov also noted that on the back of the packaging there is no reference to the copyright holder, but a reference to production in China, while the original is produced exclusively in Russia. He also stressed that the quality of the game's components leaves something to be desired: cheaper materials, smaller cards, etc. are used. In addition, Korzhenkov said, the prices of counterfeit versions of the game are often underestimated. According to Vedomosti's research, offers were found on marketplaces where the price of a fake Bunker product was between 1,000 and 1,400 rubles, while the original costs around 2,800 rubles, Korzhenkov said.
Counterfeit versions of the board game Bunker began to appear on online platforms in May 2024. By August that year, 291 product cards with illegal copies of the product had been discovered: 151 on Wildberries, 88 on Ozon, 46 on Avito and 6 on Yandex Market. Korzhenkov estimated that the total number of such counterfeits on the trading platforms exceeded 50,000 'replicas'. Of these, 137 were registered by Russian sellers, 103 by Kazakh sellers, 50 by Chinese sellers and 1 by a Kyrgyz seller. MAGENTA Legal's attorneys have already prepared and sent out pre-trial notices claiming damages for the distribution of counterfeit products and the removal of illegal copies of the board game from the marketplaces. The amount of damages in the pre-litigation claims exceeds 142 million rubles.
Anton Shamatonov, Managing Partner of MAGENTA Legal, believes that the lawsuit between Economikus and the counterfeiters has a good chance of success, as the company's trademark and the symbols used on the counterfeit products are very similar.
The law provides for various measures of liability for trademark infringement, including the recovery of damages. Pursuant to Article 1515 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the amount of damages may range from 10 thousand to 5 million rubles or twice the value of the goods to which the trademark was unlawfully affixed.