ANDREY KASHEVAROV: THERE SHOULD BE A SINGLE APPROACH TO THE CASES OF VIOALTING FIFA PROPERTY RIGHTS

The member-bodies of the Committee for Protecting FIFA Property Rights summed up the results of inspections and preventative measures

On 14 February 2018, Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Kashevarov chaired a regular meeting of the Committee for Protecting FIFA Property Rights at “Russia-2018” Steering Committee.

Summarizing FAS efforts on exposing and suppressing incidents of unfair and unlawful use of FIFA trademarks and images, Andrey Kashevarov specially pointed out that “an approach to analyzing all such cases should be identical and unified”.

The Committee appointed Deputy Head of FAS Department for Control over Advertising and Unfair Competition Yana Sklyarova, the Committee secretary. He reported that FAS exercised important explanatory work with its regional Offices regarding procedural issues of fast-tracking investigation of cases on protecting FIFA property rights.

The bodies - Committee members informed about the main results of its work to protect FIFA symbols and combat counterfeit. Goods with unlawfully marked FIFA logo were regularly found at the customs border as well as on the domestic market. Administrative and criminal cases were opened upon such facts and the violators were held liable in accord with the law.

FIFA representatives reported on the progress with the sponsor and licensing programmes of 2018 World Cup, when relevant agreements for use of symbols are concluded with new Russian and foreign companies. The license-holders already started producing and selling the World Cup official licensed products.

The parties discussed the progress and protection of 2018 World Cup ticketing programme. Alexei Shvetsov, an advisor on FIFA brand protection, highlighted an expected expansion of ticket fraud before the tournament, particularly, in the Internet, and mushrooming web-sites that sell tickets illegally.

Due to the mentioned risks and to protect the fan interests, FIFA and the Coordination centre for.RU/.РФ domains entered into an agreement to include FIFA in “Netoscop” project, the aim of which is to ensure secure use of domain names. FIFA will transfer data on domains used for fishing in the course of illegal ticketing for FIFA 2018 World Cup in Russia. Andrey Kashevarov emphasized the importance of engaging representatives of the Federal Service for Supervision over Communications, Information Technologies and Mass Media in the discussions at the Committee meetings.

The participants confirmed their readiness to continue robust efforts on exposing and preventing violations of the use of FIFA symbols within their competences.

Attendees included representatives of FAS, Russian Patent Office, the Federal Customs Service of Russia, the Ministry of Sport, the Ministry of Interior, the “Russia-2018” Steering Committee” Autonomous Non-Profit Organization, and the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA).