Ukraine fails to succeed in dealing with intellectual property theft, - European Commission

The European Commission has compiled a list of countries that violate intellectual property rights. Ukraine is in the second priority category, which includes those countries that have not achieved significant success in this area. This was stated in the report of the European Commission on the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in third countries.

India, Indonesia, Russia and Turkey appear to be on the same list.

“Despite the major regulatory approximation that Ukraine committed to in the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, which entered into force in 2016, only limited progress can be noted in the last two years,” stated in the report.

According to the report, the area of trademarks appears to be one of the most problematic. Ukraine does not provide protection against bad faith registrations. The problem is that current legislation still does not provide for the legal possibility to invalidate a trademark registered in bad faith.

Same situation with data protection. EU stakeholders report that regulatory data protection remains ineffective in Ukraine for a number of reasons.

As we reported earlier, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published a fresh report - The Global Innovation Index for 2019. Ukraine went down by 4 positions - from 43rd to 47th in the list of 126 countries. At the same time, in recent years, the innovative potential of the country has shown a slow growth - rather, due to global economic trends, than due to the development within Ukraine.