The court supported the Moscow entrepreneur and imposed a significant fine on the Ufa man, but now the owners of the original Cheese Factory decided to reduce the amount of the fine so that it would not be unbearable for the entrepreneur
The Moscow “Syrovarnya” of the restaurateur Arkady Novikov went to the world with the Ufa businessman Vladislav Lovkov, who used in his city a brand similar to the Moscow one. Earlier, the court banned him from using the word “cheese factory”.
To avoid further possible proceedings, the parties entered into a settlement agreement in the case of infringement of exclusive rights to a trademark, and the metropolitan chain refused to further pursue and recover damages from the infringer. Dmitry Azarov, co-owner of the metropolitan network of restaurants “Syrovarnya”, informed Business FM about this.
Lovkov now has to pay compensation, but by agreement of the parties, its amount is not called. I want to develop business, and not continue the conflict, summed up Arkady Novikov’s partner in the Cheese Factory restaurant project Dmitry Azarov:
“We first warned Mr. Lovkov that he was using someone else’s intellectual property and so on. He did not meet us halfway, we had to appeal to the court. Well, after the litigation, the arbitration court finally took our side, recognized our innocence and recognized, following Rospatent, the fact that the “Cheese Factory” mark is assigned to our company. The essence of the settlement agreement is that we met Lovkov halfway, there was a very significant amount of the claim, he apparently does not have such finances, we met him halfway, reduced the amount of compensation for our losses in this regard. For us, probably, it was not the amount itself that was more important, but the very fact that the incident was settled, that the sign finally belongs to us, so that someone else would not be tempted to dispute or copy us, and so on, was more important. It was a deliberate copying, and, moreover, I will say that in the press he even flaunted it in some way. He said that now, I saw Novikov’s Cheese Factory in Moscow and now I will do it even better. He had a sign, there is such a thing – they are confusingly similar. Almost copied. He was banned from using the word “cheese factory” a long time ago. And we are interested in developing our business, and not in suing someone or punishing someone. A year and a half ago, we opened a restaurant in Ufa, our partners in the Cheese Factory franchise opened an original one. It was especially important for us to resolve this issue, because people bought a franchise from us and opened a restaurant, they pay us royalties accordingly, they cooperate with us, we control them.”
On March 3, the Moscow Arbitration Court recovered from the enterprise of Vladislav Lovkov in favor of the Moscow restaurant “Syrovarnya” about 13 million rubles as compensation for violation of the exclusive rights to the trademarks of “Syrovarny”.