Lettering v. Trademarks: "IP Case of the Month"
We continue to wrap up 2025 in terms of landmark IP cases.In September 2025, the spotlight was on the protection of rights to the lettering of popular Japanese comics.
What is it about?
The publishing house "Azbuka" developed unique lettering (a special title design style) for the manga "Jujutsu Kaisen" and "Chainsaw Man." Another publishing house, "Novy Knizhny," printed a run of these comics ordered by "EMSI," the copyright holder of the trademarks "Chainsaw Man" and "Jujutsu Kaisen." During printing, "Novy Knizhny" used the title design created by "Azbuka" without permission.
The courts recovered more than 2.8 million rubles from "Novy Knizhny" for infringing the lettering rights.
Conclusions of the Intellectual Property Rights Court:
- Trademark right ≠ right to the lettering of that phrase. Holding rights to a trademark does not grant the right to use lettering belonging to another person when placing the trademark on products.
- The contractor bears responsibility. Paragraph 73 of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation No. 10 exempts a bona fide contractor (e.g., a publishing house or printing house) from liability for infringing exclusive rights when executing an unlawful order, if it did not know and should not have known about the violation. In this case, the publishing house likely developed the book covers independently and failed to conduct a proper check for potential violations when using artistic elements. "Novy Knizhny" used someone else's design objects and paid significant compensation for it.
- Word similarity is not the main thing. The IP Court pointed out an error made by lower courts: when design rights are violated, the semantic and verbal similarity of the phrases placed on the disputed goods is not relevant. An expert examination of the artistic elements (font, color, composition) is required.
We discuss the IP Court's conclusions and the September IP case on our YouTube channel MAGENTA Legal, as well as on RuTube.
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