With the new legislation, the Russian federal assembly can permit local companies and persons to make and offer products/technologies for sale that have previously been protected by patents, utility models or other industrial property rights. The right holders will only be entitled to "proportional" economic compensation, and if the right holder is from a so-called "unfriendly country" (including countries having imposed sanctions against Russia), the right holder is not entitled to economic compensation at all.

Similarly, the Russian federal assembly has adopted new legislation permitting restrictions to the scope of protection of national IP rights, so that select groups of goods and services will no longer be comprised by the scope of protection. At this point, we have yet to see a possible list of goods and services being exempt from IP protection in Russia.

It is also unknown to which extent the Russian federal assembly will make use of the new ways of restricting and potentially expropriating national IP rights. We expect the measures to be particularly relevant for areas that relate to goods and services which cannot currently be imported into Russia due to the imposed sanctions by other countries and the foreign companies that have closed down their Russian stores and production units. 

The situation in Russia changes daily, and Plesner's IP team closely follows the developments and will continue to provide updates.

Please visit Plesner's site regarding export control and trade sanctions, where we discuss sanctions related to the conflict in Ukraine in more general terms.