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On the January 17th, the Last Minute Tours travel company commented on their conflict with Last Moment Tours in an open letter to the BANKO Information Service. In summary, the case history is that Last Moment Tours made a claim to The Chamber for Patent Disputes of Intellectual Property, which made a decision to terminate the legal protection of the trademark ‘Last Minute Tours’ from the 7th of December 2005. The situation was actively discussed in the mass media and on the professional forum on www.tourdom.ru
Here is a quote from the open letter: ‘... Last Moment Tours travel company has adopted unfair methods of trading. The decision of the Chamber refers to the name of our company, in particular the word ‘Last Minute’, according to the certificate №259557. The decision of the Chamber did not refer to the graphic image. The graphic image was registered independently according to the certificate №281321. The managing company of Last Minute Tours, OJSC plans to contest its’ right to use the word ‘last-minute’ in the name of its’ company in the Chamber for Patent Disputes and in Moscow City Arbitration Court’. Moreover, Last Minute Tours hope for the cancellation of the registration of the right to use the word ‘last-minute' attached to Last Moment Tours. According to Sergey Kazakov, Representative Marketing Department of Last Minute Tours, it is such a common word to register that is the same as to register rights for the word ‘tours’.
Sergey Agafonov, General Director of Last Moment Tours, was not available for comment. Nevertheless, experts interviewed by a BANKO correspondent believe that the most logical development of events is production before court from Last Moment Tours in the very near future. Georgiy Mokhov, General Director of Persona Grata legal company stated that: ‘By now legal protection of the usage of ‘last-minute’ has been revoked. If an owner of a trademark in which a patented word is used thinks his rights were violated he can calculate the damage and go to the court’.
BANKO will continue to report on the development of events.
