Russian small and medium-sized businesses are again under pressure from “patent trolls,” who, against the backdrop of pressure already increased as a result of numerous sanctions, have turned into real raiders. Using legal tricks, they extract – and often successfully – serious funds, which puts businesses on the brink of survival, so, obviously, it is time for the state itself to intervene in this issue.
A separate group includes professional individual namesquatters acting as a private individual. One of the famous cases is lawsuit entrepreneur Andrey Galanov to the famous marketplaces Ozon and Wildberries.
The claims of patent trolls against large brands most often remain unsatisfied, due to the fact that the latter have a serious staff of lawyers and publicity. Therefore, in parallel, they terrorize smaller, but still wealthy entrepreneurs. For example, from a recent one – claims against individual entrepreneur Oskolkova (Komi Republic) and OOO OPK (Orenburg region). By the way, there are more and more of them lately – the role of regional producers due to the need for import substitution is steadily growing, which means their revenue, income, and at the same time the interest of namesquatters, too. Moreover, they often manage to achieve their goal. For example, Frutovit LLC, registered in the Moscow region, after a successfully satisfied claim from Galanov, obviously began to experience financial difficulties – a monitoring procedure was introduced in relation to the organization, that is, the first step towards bankruptcy was taken. In the context of unprecedented sanctions and pressure on the country’s economy, SMEs are already facing significant difficulties, so the need to spend energy defending their rights in litigation with outright parasites becomes an additional weakening factor, not to mention the fact that many, like Frutovit, are under this pressure and they can’t stand it at all. Probably, here, as in many other cases, it is time for the state to intervene directly and take the actions of Rospatent under tighter control, and for law enforcement agencies to carefully check the activities of such namesquatters for their compliance with the law.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
