According to the special report "Trademarks in Russia. Growing opportunities, major challenges" published recently by Thomson CompuMark (part of Thomson Reuters), Russia is a leading country in growth of trademark registrations over the past 5 years: with 36436 trademark registrations last year the Russian trademark marketplace has shown growth in 46% since 2004, which is the largest increase of any major trademark-protecting country including Brazil, China, France, Germany, U.K. and US.

As a result of a trademark infringement lawsuit with highest compensation claim in the Russian history of domain name disputes Forbes Media LLC, represented by Ivanov, Makarov & Partners, reached an agreement with the registrant of the domain name forbes.ru, according to which the domain name has been transferred to Forbes Media LLC. This amicable settlement was confirmed by the court, and the website of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine is now available at www.forbes.ru.

The Russian Patent and Trademark Office has to postpone introduction of electronic filing of trademark applications which was announced a couple of weeks earlier. The reasons for postponement are the difficulties with the service of digital signatures which is required by the electronic filing system. Once launched this system will allow to file trademark application electronically by the persons who concluded a digital signature agreement with the Patent and Trademark Office.

Our firm has taken its first pro bono case. The client is the public organization "International training and sporting society SPARTAK of N.P.Starostin" which continues the history dating back to 1935 when the first SPARTAK sporting society was established. It became then the biggest sporting society in the USSR . Our firm shall represent the client in the dispute with the Russian Trademark Office over validity of a SPARTAK trademark registered in the name of the soccer club of Moscow.

We gladly welcome a new associate of the firm Ivanov, Makarov and Partners - Ms. Irina Ermakova. Irina is a lawyer experienced in solving various corporate issues, arranging and executing M&A projects. She easily deals with international contracts, such as cross-border loans, share-holder contributions. By joining our firm Irina strengthens our firm's emerging legal practice in due diligence of intellectual property and in other cross-related legal issues of corporate law and intellectual property law.