On 16 November 2021, Maria Samartseva, Counsel and Head of IP Practice at Rybalkin, Gortsunyan & Partners, took part in an annual conference “Intellectual Property 2021” organised by Pravo.ru. RGP acted as the event’s partner.

The conference was attended by leading practitioners in the field of intellectual property law, representatives of business and government agencies. In addition to the most pressing issues of intellectual property protection, the speakers of the conference touched upon the topic of interaction between intellectual and antimonopoly law.

As part of the session “Art in Space or in Time? Determining the Balance Between IP Protection and the Application of Antitrust Provisions”, Maria Samartseva spoke on “How to Avoid Being Fined for Mentioning COVID-19 in Goods and Services Advertising?”. During her speech, Maria analysed the most recent cases associated with COVID-19 being mentioned in advertising and the position of the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (“FAS”) in such cases. Thus, according to FAS, advertising will be declared improper, if COVID-19 is mentioned in it in absence of the relevant reference in the instruction to the medicine. Moreover, even if a medicine has therapeutic activity against the coronavirus, where there is no such indication in the instruction itself, mentioning its activity against the coronavirus causing COVID-19 will be deemed off-label use and will result in the relevant statutory penalties.

The conference was held offline in Moscow.

More details in the Pravo.ru article.