OBI hypermarkets will start operating under the Domus brand – Kommersant

The structure of hypermarkets for household goods OBI – OBI Franchise Center LLC – has applied for registration of the Domus brand for all 45 classes of the International Classification of Goods and Services (ICGS). Attention was drawn to the data in the Rospatent database Vedomosti. The application is currently being reviewed.

According to the terms of the agreement with the German company OBI GmbH, the new owners must rename the hypermarkets in Russia. As one of the partners of the company specified, the hypermarkets should be renamed within six months after signing the contract. The agreement was signed in the summer of 2022, but the renaming process dragged on.

Domus is not the only variant of the name. Previously, the same person filed applications with Rospatent for the registration of the marks HOBI, OBBI, IdeaFix, Inhouse (“Inhouse”) and QBI. At least one application – IdeaFix – was withdrawn.

According to Aleksey Koshkin, a patent attorney and leading trademark specialist at Online Patent, companies quite often register several trademarks at the same time before rebranding. One of them then becomes the new title. Considering that applications have been submitted for all classes of the Nice Classification, it is unlikely that OBI will have no problems with at least one of them, the expert notes. The Rosreestr database contains about ten trademarks with the elements Domus and Domus.

OBI hypermarkets have been operating in Russia since 2003. Now there are 25 chain hypermarkets in the country. The owners of OBI announced they would stop operating in Russia in March 2022. At the end of July of the same year, the owner of the network changed. The company was received by a group of investment and construction companies MAX, 60% of which was owned by businessman Jozef Liokumovich, and 40% by Ilya Kolobkov.

However, in October OBI changed hands again. 90% of the shares in five legal entities of the network were transferred to Boksitogorsky Timber Processing Plant LLC, and the rest – to the Anti-Corruption International Public Organization. In whose interests these companies acted is unknown. In December, the OBI legal entity was transferred to the Modul-2 company (90%) and businessman Valid Korchagin (10%). Market participants said that the first company is associated with the Sindika group of the ex-president of Kabardino-Balkaria and senator Arsen Kanokov.

Anastasia Larina