Ceased infringement of trademark that was used on the Internet

Foreign company from a developing Asian country contacted our law firm in regard to our legal assistance. The company was specializing in production of electronics and accessories for mobile devices. The client detected facts of its trademark infringement by Ukrainian websites. Our main task was to stop the detected infringements of intellectual property rights on the Internet.

Detailed analysis of the infringing websites showed that their owners did not only infringe trademark but also a number of copyrights as well as unlawfully used business reputation of our client. Thus, besides placing the trademark (which had been previously registered by the client both in its own country and in Ukraine) on main pages of their websites, the infringers also used photos of products from the producer’s official website as well as impersonated themselves as the official distributors of our client in Ukraine. The last issue could influence our client’s reputation in a very negative manner since items from the websites were sold without proper formalization. Also, the sold products were often counterfeit.

Our attorneys prepared letters of complaint (cease and desist letters) and sent them directly to the infringing website owners as well as filed complaints with their hosting services providers.

After several rounds of cease and desist letters exchange as well as after several conversations with the hosting services providers we managed to achieve the primary goal – the infringing content was removed from the websites. One of the infringers even provided guaranties concerning refrainment from further infringement of our client’s rights.

Prompt actions of our attorneys allowed the Client to restore the infringed rights within minimum possible term. At the same time we managed to settle the dispute during pretrial stage which saved a great deal of money and time. Generally, pretrial settlement of disputes related to infringement on the Internet serves as primary mechanism of Client’s rights restoration. And if no damages (in practice damages may be recovered only in court) are sought, one can settle the dispute within short term and at a minimum expense by means of sending cease and desist letters to the infringer himself, hosting services provider of website, domain name registrar, search engines (Google, Yandex) or the controlling authorities.