Protection of trademark owner’s interests in a right infringement case in Uzbekistan and lost profit recovery in the amount of 200 000 US dollars

One of the largest Russian agricultural companies decided to start exporting its mayonnaise products under  (Oliv’ez) trademark to Uzbekistan.

Until 2019 the products were produced and sold by an Uzbek company under license agreement. The trademark owner terminated the license agreement with the company in 2019, but the former licensee continued to illegally manufacture the products using our Client’s trademark.

YUS’s specialists in cooperation with local associates in Uzbekistan lodged a claim on infringement of the exclusive right to  (Oliv’ez) trademark requiring lost profit recovery.

The first-instance court satisfied our request to the defendant to provide information on the income received from the sale of the products with unauthorized use of the trademark to confirm the amount of the lost profit. However, the defendant declared it impossible to provide such information due to special aspects of the internal accounting system.

We filed a request for provision of additional evidence about sales volumes by third parties – large retail chains and distributors, but the court denied the request.

As a result, the first-instance court satisfied our claims only partially, namely in recognizing the former licensee to be the infringer of the exclusive right to  (Oliv’ez) trademark and in destroying the remaining products and material, but the lost profit recovery was denied.

Our team contested the decision in the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan. In our appeal we highlighted that the defendant had deliberately avoided providing evidence in order to exclude the possibility of claiming the lost profit by the claimant, and the first-instance court, in its turn, had not judged the mentioned actions and had considered the provided evidence to be justified.

The decision of the first-instance court to deny the lost profit recovery was canceled by the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan. Under the new decision the infringer was obliged to recover the lost profit in favor of our Client in the total amount of 200 000 US dollars.