Patent Right Is Under Professional Protection

The problem of the protection of intellectual rights in an industrial society is very acute. Fruitful scientific and technical ideas, increasing labor productivity, bring significant profits. Naturally, scientists, inventors, designers want to use the material fruits of their mental work. There is a whole area in the field of legal regulation – the system of intellectual rights, serving to provide this justified desire. The Law Firm Gorodissky & Partners has great experience and merits in this field. We want to tell you about the firm, its daily activities, success and achievements, and our questions will be answered by Yury Kuznetsov, Partner of the law firm, Head of Patent Practice.

What legal services does your company specialize in?

– Gorodissky & Partners is the leading law firm in Russia in the field of intellectual property. The firm was created by patent attorneys and lawyers who started their professional activities in 1959. Next year the company celebrates the 60th anniversary of its practice.

The main divisions of the firm Gorodissky & Partners are departments for patenting inventions in the fields of applied mechanics; electronics and physics; chemistry, medicine and biotechnology, as well as security documents; trademarks; industrial designs and the legal department.

Foreign partners call our company «a boutique of intellectual property». We provide traditional services that include the protection of inventions, trademarks, trade names, commercial prototypes, industrial designs, utility models, copyright objects, preparation and registration of license agreements, pledge agreements and commercial concessions, representation in Rospatent and foreign Patent Offices, in courts and administrative bodies, and related services, the most popular among them: the protection of personal data, the legal audit of intellectual property objects, support in tax issues, legal clearance of advertising materials, settlement of issues in relation to the performance of intellectual activity.

– How widespread is the practice of patenting ideas in Russia?

– Maybe, after all, inventions?

Today, the protection of intellectual property rights is one of the pillars of innovative and market development, but not many leaders understand this. Therefore, along with our daily professional work, we pay much attention to our educational projects, we are trying to convey what opportunities are missed by companies. The most pressing issue remains the low level of activity in the field of protection of innovative developments in Russia. Here are the dry figures. For example, last year nearly 1,400,000 patent applications were filed in China, of which 1,246,000 applications were filed by national applicants.

In Russia, in 2017, there were 36,454 applications for inventions, Russian inventors filed about 23,000 applications of this number. Of course, the population of China is one and a half billion people, while in Russia the population is less than 150 million. But even taking into account the difference in the number of people with a rough calculation – in China 1 application falls on 1000 people, whereas in Russia 1 application falls on 5000 people.

– Tell us about working with patents. What is the legal support of persons or companies that applied for a patent?

– In work, we are distinguished by a «corporate» integrated approach to the protection of intellectual property. Today, this is the only possible approach to work with intellectual property, suggesting the active interaction of law firms engaged in private practice, and patent, legal services of enterprises. Enterprises that want to protect their patent rights, including representatives of small and medium-sized business, face a very difficult task. After all, for successful legal protection it is necessary not only to understand competently what should be done in each specific case – invention, trademark, industrial design, etc., but to study and understand the activities of the enterprise as a whole. In order not only to fix the rights to a specific technical development, but also to ensure the development of key competencies of the enterprise, to build the logic of legal protection created in the future...

An integrated approach is the study of all the company’s processes, all of its intellectual activity in order to timely capture and maximally consolidate the entire scope of rights for the rights holder, as far as modern legislation allows.

Patent attorneys of our firm help to compile an application for an invention or utility model, submit them to Rospatent on behalf of the applicant, communicate with experts of Rospatent in the form and substance of applications. They ensure the correct payment of patent fees, including for the issuance of a patent.

After the grant of the patent, Gorodissky & Partners monitors the expiration of the next one-year patent terms and ensures timely payment of the fee for maintaining the patent in force. Our firm always stands for the protection of rights and observance of the interests of its customers.

If Rospatent refuses the applicant to issue a patent, the patent attorneys and lawyers of the firm make up a complaint (application) to the Intellectual Property Court on behalf of the applicant, and subsequently participate in the sessions of this court.

– Does your company work not only in Russia but also abroad?

– The company, having a global correspondent network of foreign law firms and patent attorneys, conducts business in more than 100 countries around the world. Among the clients of Gorodissky & Partners are famous Russian and foreign companies and individuals.

At the end of the article, on behalf of the editorial board, we would like to congratulate the law firm Gorodissky & Partners on the victory in the rating by the international edition of The Best Lawyers©, which was published just this week. The law firm Gorodissky & Partners is recognized as the firm of the year in the field of Intellectual Property.