Amendments to the Civil Code of the Republic of Belarus concerning industrial property rights enter into force

On November 19, 2024, amendments to the Civil Code of the Republic of Belarus dated December 7, 1998 (CC) will come into force, according to which Section V "Intellectual Property" of the CC is presented in a new edition.

In the field of industrial property law, the main changes include the following:

• registration of objects of industrial property right with the patent authority will be defined as state registration;

in respect of patent law objects:

• the term «conditions of patentability» is fixed;
• actions that defined the concept of «infringement of the patentee's exclusive right» will define the concept of «use of an invention, utility model, industrial design», taking into account the amendments to the Civil Code;
• it was clarified that the exclusive right to an invention, utility model, industrial design may be exercised and protected by the patentee during the period of validity of a patent starting from the date of publication in the official bulletin of the patent authority of information on the granting of this patent;

in respect of plant varieties and animal breeds:

• the generalizing term «breeding achievement» is excluded, provisions on these objects are placed in independent articles, while their definitions with reference to special legislative acts are excluded;
• the conditions of patentability of plant varieties (novelty, distinctiveness, homogeneity and stability), provisions on the scope of legal protection (the totality of essential features of a plant variety contained in its official description), on the certification by a plant variety patent of authorship, priority of the variety and the exclusive right of the patentee, as well as on the content of the exclusive right of the patentee to the plant variety were introduced;
• the norm of the Civil Code on the term of validity of a plant variety patent is synchronized with the norm of the relevant special law (25 years subject to compliance with the requirements established by law);

in respect of topologies of integrated circuits, Chapter 65 of the Civil Code was supplemented with articles regulating the content of the exclusive right to the topology, actions recognized as the use of the topology, and the validity period of the topology certificate (ten years, counted from the earlier of the dates defined in Article 1009 of the Civil Code);

in respect of trade secrets (know-how) it is stated that they will be protected on the condition that the information constituting the trade secret (know-how) is subject to the commercial secret regime. The contract on transfer of the production secret (know-how) is called the contract on transfer of the production secret (know-how), and its essential condition, namely the obligations of the parties to ensure confidentiality of the information constituting the production secret (know-how), is defined as the contract under which the production secret (know-how) can be disposed of;

in respect of trade names:

• the law states that only commercial organizations are the holders of rights to a firm name, and the exclusive right to a firm name is valid until the liquidation of a commercial organization, termination of its activities as a result of reorganization or until its name change;
• a commercial organization will not be able to use a firm name that is confusingly similar to the firm name of another organization, if they are engaged in similar activities and information about the firm name of the first organization was included in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs later. Consequences of violation of this rule are provided for: at the request of the right holder, an organization that has violated this rule is required, at its choice, to stop carrying out activities similar to those carried out by the right holder, or to change its firm name, and is also required to reimburse the losses incurred;
• changes in the regulation of the disposal of the right to a firm name have been made. The option of alienation of the exclusive right to this object in case of reorganization of a legal entity has been excluded. Granting the right to use a firm name to another person may not be carried out on the basis of a license agreement, but may be carried out on the basis of a complex entrepreneurial license agreement (franchising);

in respect of trademarks and service marks:

• the provision that one color may be registered as a trademark is enshrined;
• the actions that may be recognized as a violation of the exclusive right to a trademark (use of a trademark or a designation similar to it to the extent of confusion without the permission of the trademark owner in respect of homogeneous goods, as well as heterogeneous goods designated by a trademark recognized as well-known in the Republic of Belarus) are defined;
• it is specified that the term of validity of a trademark certificate, but not the term of validity of a trademark registration, is subject to renewal;

no significant changes have been made regarding geographical indications. The norms on the right to use a geographical indication have been singled out in a separate article without changing the content of the article.

More detailed information about the main changes in relation to intellectual property agreements, as well as the application of liability measures for infringement of the exclusive right can be found on the official website of the National Center of Intellectual Property in the section «Actual».

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