OREANDA-NEWS. December 10, 2012. Expocentre starts a new project devoted to the struggle against infringement of exclusive rights of the intellectual property objects – Expocentre against Counterfeit. The main objective of this project is to prevent the demonstration of the products and technologies, which violate the exclusive rights of third parties, who are often the exhibitors within one exhibition.

This problem has attracted more and more attention in recent years. For example, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry (UFI) calls upon the exhibitions organizers to participate actively in solution of this problem by a number of ways, including the provision of exhibitors with the relevant information and explanations on the intellectual property issues.

Experience has proven that such projects have been implemented in many countries over last years and now demonstrate high levels of efficiency. First of all, it is a significant decrease in the number of counterfeit goods presented at the exhibitions, and, consequently, reduction of the number of conflicts arising between the exhibitors. The existence of such programmes itself makes the participation in the exhibitions more transparent from the point of view of the owners, who can not only identify the fact of the violation, but also count on the efficient provision of legal aid. Therefore, it will help third parties, who are mostly afraid to demonstrate their products at the exhibition grounds, which implement similar projects, as well as minimize the participation of potential violators of exclusive rights. In this way, the reduction of the number of potential offenders leads to a greater inflow of honest participants of the trade turnover, who choose more attractive exhibition grounds implementing such projects.

One of the main differences of Expocentre against Counterfeit Project will be its constancy. Thus, most of the forums, devoted to the problems of intellectual property, are held nowadays only few times a year and include a number of additional sessions or round tables. It is quite obvious that this may be enough only for the professional lawyers and patent attorneys employed in this sphere. Moreover, it is precisely these very persons, who represent the bulk of the participants of such forums. However, it is much more important for the companies doing their business in Russia, the employees of which mostly have no special knowledge in the field of intellectual property, to get help directly in a situation, when they need it.

Therefore, the realization of this project in the form of provision the participants of Expocentre exhibitions with legal assistance during the whole year within all exhibitions of Expocentre, will definitely create a new format of relations between the participants of exhibition events, as well as the increase of the level of responsibility and diligence. This scheme is also applicable to the partners, who have joined the project recently.

Expocentre is going not only to focus on the introduction and promotion of new services within the project, but also to pay much attention to existing proposals, such as the certifications of demonstration of exhibits and trademarks at the exhibitions, as well as the sections on the issues of legal protection in respect of the intellectual property objects shown at the exhibitions.

That way, we can declare that this project expands the scope of Expocentre’s activities in the field of intellectual property protection. Among the main areas of our project are the following:

- consultations and explanations on the issues of intellectual property for exhibitors and visitors of the exhibitions, organized by Expocentre;

- seminars and conferences on the issues of rights protection of the intellectual property objects;

- cooperation with the public authorities and commercial organizations operating in the field of intellectual property;

- certification of the demonstrated products, which are already have registered trademarks (certification of the fact of use);

- certification of the demonstration of trademarks and exhibits at the exhibition;

- rendering assistance in search for the government bodies and consulting companies.

In general, we hope that the implementation of this project will contribute to the competitive relations between the members of the trade turnover. The competitive advantage will be achieved not by the copying of products and by lower prices, but by the improvement of quality of the original products. These goals will be achieved through the increased attention to this problem on the part of the exclusive rights owners, which will increase the level of compliance control. We believe that such results will make the exhibitions held in the Russian Federation more attractive for foreign partners, who have not entered the Russian market yet due to the problems of violations of the exclusive rights.