Currently, a bill titled “Amendments to Articles 1252 and 1486 of the Russian Civil Code and Articles 4 and 99 of the Russian Arbitrazh Procedure Code” (the “Bill”) is pending in the Russian State Duma. The Bill was drafted in pursuance of a directive given by D.A. Medvedev, Russian Prime Minister, and introduced in the Russian State Duma by the Russian Ministry of Justice. The Bill was cleared by the Federal Service for Intellectual Property and the Court for Intellectual Property Rights.
Russia’s media watchdog has blocked professional networking website LinkedIn after the company was found to have violated a law requiring websites to store Russian users’ data on domestic servers.
The Tagansky District Court has published its exceptional decision in the case of Roskomnadzor (the Russian supervisory authority for telecommunications, information technology, and the media) vs the LinkedIn Corporation. The court ruled that the company’s activity in Russia was in breach of Russian legislation on personal data. The Moscow City Court in its resolution as per November 10, 2016 did not overturn the decision: LinkedIn.com has been blocked in Russia.
Since September 2015, both foreign and Russian companies have been required to use databases located in Russia to process Russian citizens’ personal data (PD) (the so-called data localization rule).
In late February 2016 a draft law (No. 1004188-6) setting out to regulate the operations of so-called news aggregators was submitted to the State Duma. The reaction from the business community has been mixed, and public authorities are taking different views too. For example, German Klimenko, the Presidential Adviser on Internet Development, supported the initiative, while Deputy Minister Alexey Volin says the Ministry of Communications and Media does not support the draft law, which equates news aggregators and media.
In late 2015 and early 2016, Rospatent registered red, green and blue colours as trademarks for Sberbank, Gazprom and MTS. The companies have, therefore, secured their right to the particular shades: Sberbank now has “green, which is Pantone 349”, MTS has “red, Pantone 485”, and Gazprom has “blue, Pantone 300CV”.
Ilya Nikiforov, Anna Ivanova, Vladimir Stepanov, Mark Rovinskiy, Pavel Sadovsky, Maria Demina, Maria Kobanenko, Denis Gavrilov and Elena Kazak became the authors of Doing business in Russian Federation by Practical Law.
New amendments to the Federal Law dated 27.07.2006 No. 152-FZ “On Personal Data” that inter alia introduce personal data localization rules take effect on 1 September 2015. The new rules therefore will enter into force sooner than initially announced, giving personal data operators less time to prepare for the upcoming changes.
The President of the Russian Federation signed the Federal Law on amendments to the Russian personal data legislation on 31 December 2014. This law changes the date of entry into force of recent amendments related to personal data processing in information telecommunication networks to 1 September 2015 instead of 1 September 2016.
The President of the Russian Federation signed federal law on the new amendments concerning the processing of personal data in Russia on July 22, 2014. Under Article 4 of this Federal Law the amendments shall come into force on September 1, 2016.
A law to curb piracy came into effect in August 2013. It has proven to be an “efficient instrument” in the fight against copyright infringement, especially since preliminary injunctions from courts became much easier to obtain.
Pavel Sadovsky and Vyacheslav Yugai contributed to the Study on Videogames published by World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
A company in the Urals has sued for the rights to the Playboy trademark, saying that the current owner, Playboy Enterprises, is not using it to produce condoms and lubricants like it ought to.