Toropygin O.Y. On the issue of criminalizing the act of infringement upon the rights and interests of copyright holders of trademarks of products and services

Abstract: The authors and trademark owners are concerned about the manufacturing and sales of counterfeit products, the scale of which poses a serious threat to the economic security of Russian Federation. The fakes market spans from shoes and clothes, to audio and video devices. The most significant cause for concern is the problem of counterfeit medications. However, there is an opinion among scholars working on this issue that the legal ramifications (stated in section 180 of the Criminal Code of Russia) for the illegal use of registered trademarks do not correspond to the actual public demand for criminal accountability. Within the theory of criminal law, this matter still remains quite controversial; and unfortunately, the consensus is yet to be reached on this issue. In this work, the author attempts to demonstrate the reasons that justify the criminalization of these actions. This research was conducted based on the accumulation of general scientific and socio-legal methods. In solving specific tasks in this research, the following methods were used: statistical, analytical, comparative legal and others. As a result of the conducted research, the author comes to following conclusions: the actions, which violate the legal use of a registered trademark, service mark, the place of origin of a product, or similar marking on a product of same type, give grounds to their criminalization due to their high public risk and their relative commonness. At the same time, the illegal use of a registered trademark symbol with regards to means of individualization that were not registered within Russian Federation, does not provide grounds (conditions) for the criminalization of these actions: section 1225 of the Civil Code of Russia does not define it as a result of intellectual activity, thus it is unclear exactly whose rights are being violated.

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