Swiss Rolex has submitted an application to Rospatent for the Chromalight trademark

This registration with Rospatent could be Rolex’s third since 2022, said Ksenia Kasyanenko, head of the international management of the Regionservice bar association. In 2024, Rospatent issued positive opinions on two Rolex applications: the Air King wordmark with two spellings. This watch is listed on the Rolex website as new for 2024.

“Despite the fact that Rolex left the Russian market, registering a trademark will allow the company to protect its intellectual property rights, including before Russian courts. So, for example, if this trademark is used by another watch manufacturer in its commercial activities, Rolex will have the opportunity to go to court to protect its exclusive rights, including recovering damages from the infringer, as well as forcing him to destroy the falsification. products,” Kasyanenko said.

Maria Aronikova, director of the trademark department at Semenov&Pevzner, says that companies are requesting old trademarks that have formally become vulnerable to attacks due to lack of use. According to him, Rolex registers new trademarks in Russia according to national and Madrid procedures. The latter allows you to protect a trademark in several countries participating in the Madrid Agreement at once.

The registration of new brands does not indicate the imminent return of Rolex to Russia, but rather is a way to protect against “trademark squatting”, when random organizations try to register the rights to the brands of large corporations, the head of the department explained. of Intellectual Property. from AB KIAP, patent attorney Eldar Guliev.

Rolex already owns the copyright to a similar international trademark (no. 971793), the legal protection of which also extends to the Russian Federation. However, in Russia there is a mechanism for early termination of legal protection of trademarks if they have not been used for the last three years. Then the trademark can be canceled by the interested party before the courts.

“If a company left the Russian market in 2022, in 2025, formally, it will be able to receive such a claim. I assume that Rolex fears that its trademarks could be canceled and subsequently registered by third parties, which will cause significant difficulties for their return in the future,” Guliyev explained.

• In 2022, Rolex told Bloomberg that the only batch of watches sold in Russia came from local private and independent retailers and were delivered before the start of the military operation. Rolex has not officially announced the resumption of supplies to the Russian Federation.

• The Rolex.com website indicates that its dealers remain in Russia; In particular, the Mercury company sells Rolex in Russia. The cost of a Rolex with Chromalight in the catalogs available for viewing on RuNet is about 2 million rubles.