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As BANKO discovered, the situation which is developing around ‘Grand voyage’, worried several other firms, whose names, in one way or another, feature words ‘Grand’ and ‘Voyage’. Meanwhile, there are not few of those with similar names: only in Moscow there are ‘Grand tour voyage’, ‘Grand-tour’ and ‘Terra Grande Tour’, not mentioning regions.
In the back rooms of the market there are assumptions that the bright and at the same time common word-combination was not chosen by accident by the company’s management. ‘I believe they used common word in the name of a brand counting on ordinary customer who will not attentively study and gets confused’ – says Arkadiy Epiphanov, director of Moscow company ‘Grand tour voyage’.
Although lawyers maintain that travel firms are able of defending themselves in such a situation if they duly patent their names. According to experts, who work in law, it is mainly large companies who officially register the brand because cases of word repetition are so frequent in names. ‘By authority of law regulations ‘About trade marks, service marks, appellation of origin’ it is not allowed to use words or names of confusing similarity to already registered trade marks. If the trade mark is not registered according to the established law procedure, the usage of similar names is banned. Therefore, it is possible to secure your company if you register the trade mark in the patent office of the Russian Federation. After the receipt of the certificate, the company acquires a legal right to request other parties using similar words or names’, comments ‘Persona Grata’ the situation.
On the other hand, it is not only firms with similar names who worry about the image consequences of disappearance of ‘Grand voyage’. This way, ‘House of traveling industry’ which positioned itself as a ‘project officially uniting all basic elements of infrastructure of tourist business under one roof’ found itself in unpleasant situation. We will remind you that in his building there was an office of the problem company. On the 21st of December ‘House’ issued a press-release where it was stated that the administration is ‘worried about the happening events and tries to get in touch with the management of ‘Grand voyage’ for official explanations’.
