OREANDA-NEWS. May 24, 2013. Speaking at the International Legal Forum in St Petersburg, at the session on “Competition Protection and Intellectual Property Protection: the Unity and Struggle of Opposites”, the Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), Igor Artemiev, said that “antimonopoly regulation must be applied very carefully in the field of intellectual property”.

According to Igor Artemiev, FAS intends to extrapolate the antimonopoly law on operations of the rights holders, including licensing agreements.

However, the Head of FAS emphasized that penetrating this field must be very careful. “There should be an exhaustive list of cases established by the law when antimonopoly intervention in the field of intellectual property is allowed. It means, first of all, possibility to issue determinations to sell licenses in order to develop competition”, stated Mr. Artemiev.

Igor Artemiev also emphasized that FAS intends to strive for legalization of parallel import by restricting the powers for protecting the rights holders in order to increase competition on the market.

“The best world antimonopoly practices assume possible application of the antimonopoly law to intellectual rights: it is formalized in the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, in explanations on licensing intellectual property drafted by the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice. Japan’s Fair Trade Commission also advised on the use of intellectual rights in accordance with the Antimonopoly Law”, clarified Igor Artemiev.