Company Names

Inventions

Utility Models

Industrial Designs

Trade Marks and Service Marks

Geographical Indications

Company Names

Topologies of Integrated Circuit

Selection Achievements

Protecton of Undisclosed Information

Unfair Competition

Copyright and Related Rights

Domain Names

Valuation of Intellectual Property

Republic of Belarus, Minsk

Nezavisimosty pr., 56-302
tel.: +375 17 331 23 32
fax: +375 17 331 16 26
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+375 298 730 730
office@lexpatent.by

Together with trade marks and service marks, as well as geographical indications, the legislation of the Republic of Belarus refers company or firm names to means of individualization of participants in civil commerce, of goods, of work, or of services.

A legal person has the exclusive right to use his company name on goods, packing, advertisement, signboards, booklets, accounts, printed editions, official forms and other documentation associated with his activity, and also when showing goods at exhibitions and fairs which are hold in the territory of the Republic of Belarus.

A company name is determined when adopting a company statute and it is subject to a registration by recording in the Uniform State Register of legal persons and individual entrepreneurs.

It is impossible to register a company name similar to an already registered one so much that it can lead to an identification of several legal persons. The company name of a legal person may be used in the trade mark belonging to that person.

In the territory of the Republic of Belarus there is in force the exclusive right to a name registered in the Republic of Belarus as designation of a legal person.

As for names registered or conventional in a foreign State, the exclusive right in the territory of the Republic of Belarus operates in the cases provided by the legislation. Thus, in conformity with clause 8 of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property a company name in the Republic of Belarus is protected without required filing of application or registering and irrespective of, whether it is a part of a trade mark.

Right to a company name and right to a trade mark

The aforementioned legal rule is often used in disputable cases when trade marks reproduce company names (or their parts) that are known in the territory of the Republic of Belarus and belong to other persons. According to the legislation of the Republic of Belarus the registration of such trade marks can be recognized invalid.

The actions which can lead by any means to a confusion of legal entities, particularly by using another's company name, are considered by the legislation of the Republic of Belarus to be unfair competition. The person realizing an unfair competition, is obliged to cease unlawful acts and to make public a refutation of spread information and actions constituting matter of the unfair competition. The party injured from an unfair competition, has the right to demand damages from the unfair competitor.