Belarus

Vlasova Mikhael & Partners

"Full service firm that dominates the legal market"

Chambers Global

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76A Masherova av., 4th floor

Minsk

Tel: +375 (17) 203-8496 / 67

Fax: +375 (17) 203-7702

www.vmp.by

 

4. Current case law trends

There is a clear trend in DPP unfair competition practice that mainly targets "pirate" registration of trademarks, being a pre-requisite to cancellation of such trademark registration by the Board of Appeal of the Belarusian Trademark Office.

Practice of revealing competition-restrictive arrangements and concerted actions is quite limited. Normally such investigations are initiated by third parties affected by restrictive practices rather than by DPP itself, and there are not many examples of this type of investigations. One dated 2010 is an investigation that revealed a competition-restrictive agreement between chains of retail stores and tobacco goods manufacturers and wholesalers. Remarkably, this investigation was initiated by a third-party small tobacco producer that experienced restrictions in market access.

There is little publicly available information on DPP's implementation of merger controls. In 2010 DPP considered 73 merger filings, most of which were cleared. To the best of our knowledge, DPP's binding orders, approvals and denials have never been challenged in courts.