On February 1, 2023, Ritual.Rus LLC (part of the Ritual.ru Group of Companies) received the registration of the Sad and the Point trademark, follows from Rospatent data. The brand is registered with the validity of the exclusive right until August 2032 in five classes of the international classification of goods and services:
06 (bronze; bells; ordinary metal letters and numbers; metal busts; metal screws, etc.);
19 (statues of stone, concrete or marble; figurines of stone, concrete or marble; figurines of stone, concrete or marble; alabaster glass; reinforced glass, etc.);
20 (sofas; non-metal closures; statues of wood, wax, plaster or plastics; figurines of wood, wax, plaster or plastics; figurines of wood, wax, plaster or plastics, etc.);
39 (rental of horses; rental of freezers; rental of navigation systems; rental of refrigerators; rental of vehicles; loading and unloading works; unloading works, etc.);
45 (marriage agencies; detective agencies; night security agencies; embalming; funeral bureaus; advice on funeral services, including burial of the remains, ashes of the dead or dead, funerals, maintenance of burial places; cremation; organization and conduct rite of farewell, organization of fireworks during burial and reburial, etc.).
The company applied for the trademark last summer. As Oleg Shelyagov admitted in an interview with RBC. the head of the Ritual.ru Group of Companies, the filing of the application was “on emotions”: “To say that this brand will be used tomorrow in our field is not. We did it in reserve, so that it would be. In fact, we take our work and mission seriously. And “Sad and Period” is a bit on the edge, and we try not to approach the edge. But we just did it so that no one else would.”
The popularity of the use of “… and period” in the name was caused by a deal to sell the Russian business to the American corporation McDonald’s. In March 2022, the famous fast food after the start of a special military operation in Ukraine suspended the work of all its 850 restaurants. A few months later, the Russian business of McDonald’s was bought out by a businessman from Kuzbass Alexander Govor. Already in June, the network opened the first restaurants under the new name “Vkusno – and that’s it.” The McDonald’s brand was a symbol of Western culture for Russians, and even choosing a new name for the chain was not easy, Govor explained at the time. “We knew that whatever name we chose, it would not be liked right away anyway. Just because the previous brand was very loved and for many it was very symbolic. People saw symbolism in the fact that our company became completely Russian, and actively discussed that the departure of the corporation symbolizes the exodus of Western culture from Russia.” Immediately after the presentation of the new brand, many companies began to try to use it: “Smart and point”, “Pure and point”, etc.
