On February 13, 2020, the Court of Cassation of the Supreme Court upheld the decisions of the courts of the first instance and appeal in the case of JSC Kyiv Vitamin Plant against Domile LLC on the illegal use of the mark ‘Ascorbinka’ (Ukrainian, Аскорбінка).
Kyiv Vitamin Plant appealed to the Economic Court in the spring of 2019 with a lawsuit against Domile about stopping the intellectual property rights infringement to the trademark Ascorbinka by stopping use by all available means (export, import, storage, offer for sale, sale, advertising) of goods printed on their packaging that contains such a product, a signboard associated with it, a label, badge, tag or other item attached to the product, confusingly similar to the registered trademark Ascorbinka.
Ascorbinka by Kyiv Vitamin Plant
Askorbinchik by Domile
Kyiv Vitamin Plant indicated that the products of the offender ‘Domіle Ascorbinchik’ and the dietary supplement Ascorbinka belong to the same type of products intended for a same circle of consumers (people who need to replenish the needs for vitamin C) and are selling through the same distribution channels (retail stores in Ukraine), and therefore they are homogeneous (there is a fundamental likelihood that consumers will have the impression that the copied and original goods belong to one manufacturer).
Also, before filing a lawsuit, Kyiv Vitamin Plant ordered an examination for the similarity of disputed designations.
In September 2019, the court of the first instance fully satisfied the claim of the owner of the Ascorbinka trademark, in November this decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal, and then the Supreme Court.