Intellectual Property Rights and the Russia-ukraine War

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 47 No. 4
• Publication year: 2022
• Author: John Pavolotsky
• topic: Intellectual Property

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR

John Pavolotsky

SEVEN MONTHS INTO THE WAR: A REVIEW OF NEW LEGAL AND IP POLICY DEVELOPMENTS

September 4, 2022

Sunday morning, Labor Day weekend. I'm enjoying a cappuccino at Fiero Caffe, in San Mateo, with a longtime friend and new acquaintance. Beautiful sunny day. Still pleasantly warm, with the real heat to follow later in the day. Our table outside is in the shade, overlooking the San Mateo Creek. Not quite the Arno, but verdant (despite our ongoing drought) and quiet. We discuss a variety of subjects; after all, what else do you do at a cafe on Sunday morning? In time, the conversation turns to Ukraine. I mention to my new acquaintance that I was born there, immigrated to the United States in 1979, when I was six, and was planning to go back, for the first time, this summer, until, of course, the invasion in February throttled my plans.

This is my second article on the impact of the war on IP matters in Ukraine and Russia. My first article on this topic appeared in the Fall issue of New Matter. August 24, 2022 coincided with the thirty first anniversary of the Ukraine Parliament (Verhovna Rada) declaring independence from the former U.S.S.R. and with the six-month anniversary of the war. The Russian invasion has stalled, with the focus now, as it has been for some time, on eastern and southern Ukraine. Recently, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in Kherson. From the perspective of the Russian government, this is still a "special military operation." There is no end in sight.

From an IP perspective, we are in a holding pattern. A flurry of sanctions followed the invasion. Unsurprisingly, those remain. For more details, please read, if you have not, my first article in this series. The pace of new sanctions has slowed. Some of this could be attributed to traditionally slower summer months for any legislative or executive body. On August 5, 2022, the National and...