President OKs intellectual property legislation amendments
The text of the Law is to be published in the press.
Earlier, Kazakh Minister of Justice of the Republic of Kazakhstan Marat Beketayev said that the main novelties of the amendments are: first, the creation of a single-level system for registration of intellectual property. The powers to register intellectual property rights are transferred to the National Intellectual Property Institute RSE, an expert organization. In Kazakhstan, receipt of applications and expert examination are carried out by the expert organization, while registration of intellectual property rights is done by the Ministry of Justice. The transfer of these powers to the expert organization will save KZT 58 million of budget revenues.
The second novelty is the enhancement of pre-trial examination of registration disputes. In accordance with the Civil Code, disputes on the industrial property registration are subject to mandatory pre-trial examination. It is proposed to empower the Appeals Board under the Ministry of Justice to adjudicate disputes concerning the similarities in commercial names and trademarks.
The amendments comprise provisions aimed at enforcing a copyright holder's rights to receive compensation for the illegal use of a trademark. The Copyright Law warrants that an author is entitled to recover compensation for the illegal use of his/her works from the offender. However, an owner of a trademark does not possess such a right. Therefore, the Civil Code amendments establishing the respective right of a trademark owner are being introduced. Now, the offender will be obliged to pay a specified compensation.
In addition, it is proposed to publish applications for trademarks from the time the expert organization receives them. Then, any interested person can get to know applications for trademarks after the receipt by the expert organization, and make their claims before they are registered.
Besides, the amendments simplify the procedure for registering licensing agreements for industrial properties, that is, now there is no need to submit applications to register the original contract.