This article is about protection of brands in Ukraine. It doesn’t cover protection of copyrights or patent law, which are other type of IP rights with different protection strategy.
The IP situation in Ukraine is very well reflected in special 301 report which took Ukraine off priority watch list in 2008 due to significant improvements in IPR protection, but put it back in 2012, with further slipping down to status of priority foreign country in 2013. For 3 years this status remains unchanged.
Widespread piracy, use of unlicensed software even by government, lack of effective means of IP protection from 301 report are very fair statements about Ukraine.
It remains to be paradise for pirates (cheap and open Internet + high skilled IT), fertile turf for counterfeiters and “no shooting” land for patent trolls.
Association with EU in 2014 did not help much. Bad economical situation along with weakness of the government makes no much use of new formal IP protection policies and legislation.
To say about the latter, change of Criminal procedural code (2012), total reform of police (2014), legislation reformation, though being positive generally, left IP protection on the side. South-East territories, being uncontrolled in result of war, just topped the bucket of problems with illegal products including counterfeit originated from there.
Talking specifically about brand protection, the situation generally follows IP protection trends, namely widespread ignorance of trademark rights, weak prosecution, low priority for LEA.
Majority of counterfeit in Ukraine without surprise originates in China and in Turkey, being imported in Ukraine. The trends are quite general – counterfeiters order generic components and substances to finalize production cycle locally. Full cycle local counterfeit is quite rare as well as import of counterfeit products.
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