On May 30, the Turkish development holding ENKA filed a lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court against the Paveletskaya Ploshchad company, which owns the Paveletskaya Plaza shopping and entertainment center (73,000 sq.m) near the Paveletsky railway station. There is no other information in the case card yet, but it says that Rospatent has been involved in the dispute as a third party. Representatives of ENKA and Paveletskaya Ploshchad (owned by Mall Management Group, the main owner of PIK Group of Companies Sergey Gordeev) did not respond to Vedomosti’s request.
Two consultants who worked with the participants in the litigation say that the dispute between the parties is most likely in relation to the Paveletskaya Plaza trademark. The fact is that this is the name of both the ENKA business center and the Mall Management Group shopping and entertainment center, they remind. Construction of an office complex with a total area of 112,100 sq. m was completed back in 2003, follows from the information on the website of the Turkish holding. The project itself is often also called Paveletskaya Tower, consultants point out. The shopping center “Paveletskaya Plaza”, in turn, received permission to put into operation only in 2021. At the same time, “Paveletskaya Square” filed an application for this trademark, which will be valid until 2031, according to SPARK-Interfax “. ENKA did not register such a designation.
The fact that the dispute is really related to the Paveletskaya Plaza trademark is also confirmed by the presence of a similar dispute in the Intellectual Property Court. In January 2023, ENKA filed a lawsuit against Rospatent to “annul its decision to refuse to satisfy the objection to the granting of legal protection to this name.” The Paveletskaya Ploshchad company was declared as a third party in this dispute, the meeting itself is scheduled for July 13, according to the case file.
The representative of Rospatent explained to Vedomosti that ENKA applied to the office last year. In her objection, she referred to the fact that she owns the commercial designation “Paveletskaya Plaza”. The company had exclusive rights to it before Paveletskaya Square, she pointed out. In addition, the Turkish holding believes that the name “Paveletskaya Plaza” is associated with it, so its registration as a third party can mislead consumers. As a result, Rospatent did not find in the materials submitted by the company evidence of the emergence of its rights to the commercial designation of the disputed mark, the representative of the department says.
Most likely, ENKA filed a lawsuit against the Mall Management Group with a claim to recognize its actions to register or acquire rights to the Paveletskaya Plaza trademark as an act of unfair competition, says patent attorney and managing partner of Zuykov and Partners Sergey Zuykov. However, the office center and the shopping complex are not direct competitors, they have different functional purposes, notes Nevsky IP Law partner Nikolay Zaichenko.
ENKA does not have much chance of canceling the decision of Rospatent if the Turkish company does not provide other, more weighty arguments, Zuykov believes. He points out that she has difficulty proving the continued use of the commercial name “Paveletskaya Plaza” since 2003. The building is referred to differently in all documents – “Enka Building”, “Complex on Paveletskaya” and not “Paveletskaya Plaza” , agrees intellectual property lawyer Anastasia Skovpen. Zaichenko also considers the chances of winning the lawsuit low, since the Turkish holding needs to prove that the buyers and tenants of these objects really confuse them. The Intellectual Property Court will most likely refuse to satisfy ENKA’s claim, however, Paveletskaya Square in this case is unlikely to be able to force the Turkish holding to rename its object, he concludes.
