AM law firm partner, advocate and trademark attorney Vanik Margaryan represents interests of ZF group for more than 10 years being one of the first representatives of trademark owners, which used IP rights protection instruments of RA SRS (customs bodies). 

Within that procedure import of the goods with the registered trademarks (ZF, Sachs, Lemforder, TRW) is being suspended by customs bodies in case importer has no consent from rights holder and import is made from non Eurasian economic union country. In one of such cases illegal import was suspended and court claim was submitted with request of banning such import and destruction of the illegally imported goods.

By judgment of the civil court of general jurisdiction of Yerevan the submitted claim was fully satisfied, entered into force and illegal importer was banned to import any goods with ZF trademarks, while all the illegally imported goods are to be destroyed. This is a very important judgment and shows possible negative consequences of violation of IP rights in Armenia within any illegal import of the goods, the rights towards which are protected by right holders. 

Moreover, in parallel with this court case we have also received clarification from SRS in response to our inquiry according to which hereinafter TM right holders will be informed about customs value of suspended goods, which will give opportunity to protect rights against imports with bigger quantity of illegal goods and to exclude illegal imports in future. 

AM law firm will continue the protection of ZF group trademarks in Armenia and urges to avoid any illegal import of ZF, Sachs, Lemforder and TRW goods without consent of the right holder. Currently new court claims were submitted to courts based on which several big imports with ZF group trademarks are suspended till the end of judicial proceedings.