Ukraine Considers Introducing Administrative Appeal against Industrial Designs and Utility Models

During a recent roundtable organized by the Ukrainian IPO in Kiev, Ukraine, the majority of the attendees, mostly IP practitioners, supported the idea of legislation changes that would introduce an administrative appeal against the registered industrial designs and utility models.

In Ukraine, there is no substantive examination of industrial design and utility model applications. This fact encourages copying and registration of identical or similar designs and utility models, mostly as an act of bad faith. To make matters worse, such registered industrial designs and utility models become recorded in the customs register of IP rights, thus hampering the movement of goods across the border.

For the moment the Ukrainian PTO only has a brief outline of the future system, but the main idea is to place the Board within the PTO in charge of considering such appeals, organizing substantive examinations and making decisions on invalidation of IP rights.

The interested parties will be able to appeal the Board’s decisions in court, but the PTO is aiming to make the procedure faster and less time and money consuming compared to the judicial procedure of invalidation currently available.

It is expected that the draft laws containing these amendments will be completed and published in July-August 2015.

By: Yuriy Karlash

For more information, please contact Yuriy Karlash at our Ukraine office.