About the jurisdiction of the consideration of disputes relating to the recognition of acts of unfair competition

January 25, 2010, the Act of the Republic of Belarus of July 15, 2007, named "The law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law of the Republic of Belarus, named " The law on Trademarks and Service Marks. "

In the act, in particular, the new edition presents the art. 25 of  "the Law on Trademarks and Service Marks ", which defines the grounds for the annulment of the provision of legal protection for a trademark.

Subparagraph 1.3 of point 1, Art. 25 of the Act defines, that the provision of legal protection for a trademark may be fully or partially invalidated during the term of legal protection, if the actions of the owner, related to registration of the trademark were recognized by antitrust authority or court as unfair competition.

Thus, the abovementioned norm enshrined the opportunity to apply directly to the court in order to protect the economic entity's rights and lawful interests of all the benefits, aimed at acquiring the benefits within the business activities of economic entities and competitors that are contrary to the Law of the Republic of Belarus, named "The law on Counteraction to Monopolistic Activities and Promotion of Competition with the requirements of good faith and reasonableness”, and may cause or has caused damage to other economic actors -competitors or harm their reputation (unfair competition).

The cases of the establishing the fact of unfair competition in the courts within the jurisdiction of the courts, in accordance with the delimitation of jurisdiction referred to in Civil Procedure and the Commercial Procedural Code of the Republic of Belarus.

In particular, the Judicial Board for Intellectual Property High Court of the Republic of Belarus within the jurisdiction of civil cases on disputes arising from the legislation regulating the relations arising in connection with creation, legal protection and use of industrial property rights (unfair competition, in terms of misuse of the Trademarks (service marks) (Article 26 of the Civil Procedure Code).

In the system of economic courts the cases for other non-use of industrial property, the facts of violations the antitrust laws, in terms of unfair competition, are being considered.

The fact of unfair competition can be established in the administrative order by the antimonopoly authority , whose functions fulfills the Ministry of Economy at commodity markets of the Republic, in accordance with the norm of subparagraph 1.1 of paragraph 1 of Presidential Decree of October 13, 2009 № 499, named "The decree on some measures to improve antimonopoly regulation and competition", the structural units of regional (Minsk city) executive committees -on goods unfair competition at the commodity markets regions (Minsk).

The order of making decision is determined by the Regulations on the review of applications (appeals) on the violation of antimonopoly legislation in terms of unfair competition, approved by the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Belarus of 17.04.2006 № 61.

It is important to note: the application filed by the competition authority should contain the information and documents, stated by the instructions, and should confirm the validity of the information contained in the application, it should also contain the materials, with which the applicant justifies his claim.

In accordance with paragraph 5 of the Regulation, a statement, supplied to the Department, should include:

• information about the applicant and the economic entity in respect to which an application is made (the name specifying the organizational and legal forms, postal and legal addresses, other information);
• description of the violation of antimonopoly legislation, with reference to the paragraph of article 14.2 of the Act, which includes the forms of unfair competition, aв the requirement that the applicant includes into his claim;
• information about the main types of the applicant activity, products, produced and supplied to the market, the geographical boundaries of the activity, volume of productivity and sales of goods.

In cases of the absence of the information given, as well as the documents proving the facts of antitrust laws violation (written evidence), the competition authority may refuse to accept the application for violation of antitrust laws.