As of February 28, 2018 the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs comes into force in the Russian Federation.

Accession to the Hague System will allow both Russian and foreign applicants to benefit from the simpler procedure of design rights registration. Thus, Russian designers obtain the opportunity to file international design applications, and foreign applicants will be able to designate Russia.

In the meantime, it is worth mentioning that requirements of the Russian Patent Office for international design applications will not differ from those for national ones. This presupposes that the requirement of unity should be met and the variants of the design in the international application should not only belong to one class of the Locarno Classification but also differ only in minor features.

Additionally, the Russian Patent Office has established individual fees for the international industrial design registration and also belongs to the number of Patent Offices which carry out substantive examination of the international design applications.

Therefore, ratification of the Geneva Act opens a new way of design rights registration. Still, foreign applicants should consider the above-mentioned factors when filing an international multiple design application designating Russia.

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