Lawyers of Arzinger Law Office successfully stood up for the rights of Kometa Plus LLC, an exclusive licensee, to use the image of the cartoon character Cheburashka in Ukraine.

Passions about Cheburashka have been running high in courts of the Russian Federation for more than one year. The wave has reached this country, since the exceptional licensee that has received the exclusive right to use the character, including for the manufacture of toys and their sale on the territory of Ukraine, is suffering unfair competition from private entrepreneurs that illegally (without license) use the heartwarming image of the cartoon character to manufacture toys.

To protect its exclusive rights, the licensee, Kometa Plus LLC, previously appealed to the economic court of the ARC, which supported the defendant in the dispute referring to the fact that the plaintiff's rights were not violated, as it was the art director of the cartoon about Cheburashka who should have been considered the author of the character. Hence, he was the one having the right to dispose of the property rights to the character in question, which the rightholder had not disposed of.

On April 12, 2012 Sevastopol Commercial Court of Appeals recognized that the right to Cheburashka belonged to the animation company, which was the successor of Soyuzmultfilm. Thus, on the complaint prepared by Arzinger’s lawyers the court of appeal made ​​the decision to protect the licensee’s violated rights, with an understanding that the character as a copyright object was the result of collective creative work and, therefore, the exclusive rights to it belonged to the animation company.

The legal position of the licensee (the plaintiff) was formulated by Arzinger’s Senior Associate Natalya Ivanytska, Ph.D., and presented in the court of appeal by Arzinger’s Associate Anton Polikarpov.