BANKRUPT XLINE TRADEMARK OWNER LOST AN APPEAL TO KIA MOTORS

BANKRUPT XLINE TRADEMARK OWNER LOST AN APPEAL TO KIA MOTORS

BANKRUPT XLINE TRADEMARK OWNER LOST AN APPEAL TO KIA MOTORS

The hearing of the Ninth Commercial Court of Appeal on the case of the XLine trademark registered in 2015 by the Rostov businessman Oleg Ivus, held on Thursday, ended with the rejection of the complaint. The decision of the court of first instance, which did not satisfy the businessman’s claim to collect 91 billion rubles from the Korean company Kia Motors, was upheld. It is not known whether the representatives of Ivus will appeal to the cassation instance, but as some experts note, they have little chance of winning the case.



Oleg Ivus himself was declared bankrupt in 2018 and underwent procedures related to debt restructuring. The businessman owes more than 632.8 million rubles to the number of banks (BM-Bank, VTB, Otkritie).

Therefore, the court of Rostov, which was considering the Ivus case, decided that the XLine trademark was an attractive asset that could be sold profitably, thereby satisfying the appetites of creditors.

They tried to put the brand up for auction for 3.6 billion rubles and representatives of the insolvent debtor filed a claim for violation of the exclusive right to the Korean car manufacturer. Since 2017, Kia Motors has been selling X-Line version cars in Russia (Kia Rio, Picanto, Sorento).

The obviously overstated amount of financial claims of Oleg Ivus against Kia Motors arose as a result of a simple mathematical operation: the basic price of each Rio X-Line car sold in Russia for the entire time (875 thousand rubles) was multiplied by their number (52 thousand) and then doubled in accordance with the norms of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.

Had Ivus sued the Korean manufacturer earlier, he would have had a chance to win the case.

As a result, the court took into account not only the issue of confusing similarity in the means of individualization, since cars and wheels are not similar goods.

The court noted that during the last few years, while the entrepreneur had been going through bankruptcy proceedings, there was no evidence of the actual use of the trademark. Now, as experts note, Kia Motors has the opportunity to apply to Rospatent and try to register the trademark of the former entrepreneur for itself, unless, of course, someone else does it faster.


15.01.2021