Ukrainian Court Rules in Favor of eBay in Trademark Infringement Case

On October 3, 2012, the Solomensky District Court of Kiev ruled in favor of eBay in its claim against the Ukrainian resident Stasyuk Andriy, Ukraine’s PTO and the domain name registrar NIC.ua.

The court invalidated Andriy’s trademark registration ‘eBay’ No. 150439, identical to eBay’s trademark (word mark), and ordered the domain names ebay.com.ua and ebay.co.ua, also registered by Andriy, to be delegated to eBay.

On January 10, 2012, the Ukrainian PTO registered Andriy’s trademark in class 38 (telecommunications), while two eBay’s trademarks, the name and the logo, were registered in class 35 (advertising and business) on December 16, 2002 and September 10, 2009.

When the PTO granted protection to Andriy’s trademark, it did not consider the services in class 35 and class 38 to be related. However, during the proceedings, a court examiner appointed by eBay established similarity between services covered by class 35 and class 38, and the court ruled that Andriy’s trademark could mislead the consumers as to the service provider.

eBay Inc. is an American multinational internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages ebay.com, an online auction and shopping website through which individuals and businesses can buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide.

Prepared by: Maya Kryvoshei

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Source: Yuridicheskaya Praktika, a Ukrainian legal newspaper