MOSCOW, Feb 15 - RIA Novosti. The Thirteenth Arbitration Court of Appeal (St. Petersburg) on the claim of the companies of the BTK Group group, a major manufacturer of clothing, including uniforms for the Ministry of Defense, recovered 4 million rubles from the Russian "daughter" of Adidas for the illegal use of the Urban Tiger brand.
As follows from the court's decision published on Tuesday, the appellate instance, having considered the complaints of the plaintiffs - JSC "BTK Group", JSC "Industrial Assets" and LLC "TSES", canceled the decision of the arbitration court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, which rejected the claim. The Court of Appeal ordered the defendant LLC "Adidas" to withdraw from circulation and destroy products, labels and price tags containing the designations Urban Tiger or Urb Tiger, confusingly similar to the trademark of the plaintiffs.
BTK Group found that Adidas infringes its rights to two trademarks - the verbal Urban Tiger and the graphic in the form of a tiger's head with the inscription Urbantiger under it. The defendant sold on the website and in stores, as well as advertised Urban Tiger and Urb Tiger hoodies on the Internet. The plaintiffs demanded to recover compensation from the violator – 5 million rubles for each brand. They made a similar demand to Novy Standard LLC, which owns a search engine for online clothing and footwear stores.
Adidas stated in court that the plaintiffs' brands are not applied to its products and are not used for their individualization, the designations were used only to describe the products on the website and on the labels. In addition, according to the defendant, the placement of well-known Adidas brands on products eliminates the possibility of mixing products in the eyes of consumers. The court of first instance in March completely rejected the claim. He also took into account that after receiving a claim from the copyright holder, Adidas stopped using the disputed designations in order to avoid a conflict.
The Court of Appeal disagreed with the lower instance. He pointed out that the phrase Urban Tiger, contrary to her conclusions, does not carry any information about the product and its characteristics and is not commonly used to describe clothing. In this regard, the court found a violation of the plaintiffs' rights to the Urban Tiger trademark. With regard to the graphic sign, the court concluded that the defendant does not use similar designations. Also, the Court of Appeal rejected the claims to the "New Standard", since it is an information intermediary and does not bear responsibility for the information posted on the Adidas website.
BTK Group was founded in 2005. The company specializes in the development and subsequent sale of clothing and footwear, including workwear, including uniforms for law enforcement agencies.
