Forgery Protection

Counterfeiting means imitation of the product or service by another manufacturer.

Counterfeiting causes irreparable damage to business, taking not only part of your profit, but it can also cause significant damage to business reputation, as people, consumers, buying a low-quality forgery think that this product is produced by you.

It is quite difficult for an ordinary consumer to detect a forgery, since counterfeiters often put a lot of effort to ensure that their product does not differ in appearance from the genuine product. However, the main goal of counterfeiters is always to make unjustified profit, using not only the established business reputation, but also making this profit by saving on low-quality components and cheap raw materials, etc.

In the Republic of Belarus, counterfeits can be effectively countered by applying a broad range of measures. Both legislation, courts, and law enforcement agencies can provide effective remedy to any prudent entrepreneur working in the Belarusian market, but under one condition. An entrepreneur (businessman) should mainly monitor the market and detect cases of counterfeiting by himself/herself. This can be done independently or can be also entrusted to a specialized organization, such as Beliaevs and partners.

However, there are groups of the products, counterfeiting of which is monitored by the state bodies themselves in Belarus. These are the products that can impact people's health, such as alcohol, tobacco, fertilizers, etc.

Types of counterfeit products:

·        The simplest type is complete (100 percent) copying. Such products are always of poor quality and fail quickly. Our company fights against such counterfeits by law enforcement means.

·        A more complicated type is counterfeit, produced by imitation. In this case, the counterfeiters change a part of appearance of the products or packages, while maintaining their general visual similarity. In legal terms, they try to mislead the consumer with regard to the product or manufacturer. Another legal term used is confusing similarity. In this case, the judicial remedies to protect the clients should be used.

·        The most difficult case is сounterfeiting by means of brand mimicry. In this case, the сounterfeits are the most sophisticated, they consist of the elements, that differ separately from a genuine product, but after combining all these elements, a consumer gets impression these are known products of your production. These counterfeits are mostly of appropriate quality. They are produced to grasp your consumers, to make a profit using your reputation and to reduce your profit at the same time. In this case, we have much work ahead of us both in the Intellectual Property Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Belarus and in the Ministry of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade (MART).

Beliaevs & partners law group has extensive experience in combating counterfeiting in all areas and at all levels. We will solve any problems together and get rid of counterfeiting!