Moscow, June 14, 2007

On June 14, 2007 the LES Russia seminar “Problems and practice of IP marketing” was held in Moscow. About 30 attendees from Russian and Ukrainian industrial companies and legal circles participated at the seminar.

Dr. Natalia Karpova, President, LES Russia, has noted at the Opening message that more intensive share of experience among the licensing professionals is needed in view of the growing role of intellectual property in world economy and insufficient awareness of Russian manufacturers of timely and adequate IP protection. The seminar is intended to deal with the modern tendencies in technology transfer among numerous organizations working in various business fields.

Mr. Vladimir Urezchenko, Chief Program Manager, International Scientific and Technical Center (ISTC), has delivered a report “ISTC experience on international cooperation in creation and use of IP subjects”. Vladimir has explained in detail the purposes of his Center, financial sources used in its programs and activities in CIS countries, and also has provided detailed principles of allocation of rights to commercial and non-commercial use of IP rights developed within ISTC programs. Novel procedures of informational exchange, cooperation between the parties and contractor, the decision making procedures used by financing parties. Actually ISTC is a unique mechanism of commercialization of IP subjects owned by R&D institutes throughout CIS countries; said mechanism is financed by International Community and may be successfully applied by many domestic R&D organizations.

Also much interest has been paid to a report “Experience of Russian-Chinese technology parks in promotion of R&D results”, delivered by Professor Vladimir Vaschenko, Counsel, Russian-Chinese technology park “DRUZHBA”. The report has described organizational structure of said park, the resources used in Russian-Chinese technology transfer, the mechanism of commercialization of Russian developments in China, etc. Prof. Vaschenko has highlighted the benefits of Russian-Chinese technology transfer and pointed out to the related problems and the ways to solve them. The special pride of the speaker has concerned the architecture of the Internet site and informational and marketing system in the Russian-Chinese technology park. Special interest of the audience has been paid to the specific features of the legal mechanism of technology transfer and adequate IP protection in the Peoples Republic of China and in other countries.

Mr. Anatoly Lymar, Director, Coordination and Analytical Center for Exhibitions, Ministry Science of Education, has delivered a report “Exhibitions as effective instrument of new technologies and R&D product promotion in the Russian and foreign markets”. Anatoly has considered the main purposes of exhibitions and congresses paying a special attention to the Annual Moscow International Salon of Investments and Innovations, which resulted in the conclusion of many technology transfer contracts. Mr. Lymar has analyzed the dynamical changes of fair values, classification of exhibits by priorities, classification of targets set by the exhibitors, which participate in innovation exhibitions, classification of exhibits by commercialization schemes, and basic criteria for selecting exhibits and exhibitors.

Mr. Dmitry Makarov, Lawyer, “Gorodissky & Partners”, has spoken on “Licensing practice in Russia for different IP subjects”. Dmitry has illustrated different approaches of the russian courts to license agreements without compensation; to validity of license agreements, which fail to meet the Law requirements for joint-stock companies; to the practice of attributing to costs the royalty, paid under a trademark license agreement, before the trademark is registered with the Russian PTO; to the practice of withholding VAT by licensee, when royalty is paid to a foreign licensor; to the validity of license agreements, which have not been duly registered, etc. Also the speaker shared his experience related to the consideration of the disputes on license agreements, by the russian courts.

The final report of the seminar was delivered by Ms. Maria Vlasova, Lawyer, “Steiner, Neiman and Partners”. The report “On practice of assignment agreements on copyright and neighboring rights” has contained a detailed analysis of the russian court practice in the disputes related to copyright and neighboring rights, in particular, to a recent court decision, by which the representation of information in Internet has been deemed as a violation of copyrights. Such a court decision makes a positive step in the russian court practice.

All speeches have attracted much interest of the attendees, and the seminar has become one more success in the long list of successful events held by LES Russia.