Stoloto is challenging the termination of legal protection of the Bingo and Keno trademarks

Stoloto is challenging the decision of Rospatent to terminate the legal protection of the Bingo and Keno trademarks in the intellectual property court. At the beginning of the year, Stoloto’s competitor, National Lotteries, was able to achieve recognition of the names as commonly used for lotteries. Stoloto can still use the designations as logos, but now nothing prevents other market participants from doing so. Lawyers believe that the dispute will continue “until the last possibilities are exhausted,” accompanied by the appearance of similar trademarks among different lottery operators.

“Kommersant” discovered in the file of arbitration cases that JSC “Technological Company “Center”” (brand “Stoloto”) on September 25 filed a complaint with the intellectual property court against the actions of Rospatent. The third party in the application is Sports Lotteries LLC (National Lotteries brand).

The National Lotteries told Kommersant that at the beginning of the year they challenged in the Patent Disputes Chamber of Rospatent the legal protection of the marks “Bingo” in several variations and “Keno”, which belonged to Stoloto, because they consider them “commonly used for certain categories lottery games. As a result, the legal protection of “Bingo” and “Keno” was terminated in terms of “classes of the international classification of goods and services related to and similar to lotteries,” the National Lotteries emphasized.

According to the Rospatent document database, the main argument in the dispute was that the Stoloto registration of the Bingo and Keno trademarks was carried out “in violation of the requirements established by paragraphs 1 and 3 of Art. 1483 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.” This article establishes the grounds for refusal to register a designation as a trademark, clarifies the executive director of Media-NN, Georgy Davidyan. “If a trademark is registered in violation of the requirements, the decision to register can be challenged,” he says. Rospatent confirmed to Kommersant that they refused to register applications for the trademarks “Keno Sportloto” and “Superkeno” because they did not meet the requirements of paragraph 1 of Art. 1483 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (did not have distinctiveness, but were generally accepted).

Stoloto claims that the chamber violated the company’s rights and intends to restore legal protection of trademarks. At the same time, Stoloto emphasized that the termination of exclusive rights does not prohibit the use of designations as logos. The company uses the “Keno” and “Rocketbingo” signs to conduct lotteries.

The most resonant, successful trademarks often become a subject of interest to market participants from the point of view of the possibility of terminating legal protection (or, conversely, preserving it), notes Alina Akinshina, CEO of Online Patent. “It can be expected that the dispute will continue until the last avenues of challenge are exhausted, with participating companies potentially filing similar trademark applications in parallel, which in turn, if successfully registered, will also be subject to challenge,” she says.

At the same time, the expert clarifies, so far all the grounds used by Sports Lotteries are aimed at terminating the protection of trademarks, but not at “assigning rights” to them. The words “Keno” and “Bingo” refer to a popular game, a type of lotto, so the consumer may have “a false association and confusion regarding the service provider,” the National Lotteries noted. From Rospatent materials it follows that the company is interested in using trademarks in its activities.

Yulia Yurasova