§ 4. The Right to a Commercial Name

Article 1538. The Commercial Name

1. The legal entities pursuing entrepreneurial activities (including non-commercial organizations to which a right to pursue such activities has been conferred in accordance with a law by their constitutive documents) and also individual entrepreneurs may use commercial names to individualize their trade, industrial and other enterprises (Article 132), such names not being company names and not subject to compulsory inclusion in the constitutive documents and in the comprehensive state register of legal entities.

2. A commercial name may be used by the right holder to individualize one or several enterprises. Two and more commercial names shall not be simultaneously used to individualize one enterprise.

Article 1539. The Exclusive Right to a Commercial Name

1. A right holder owns an exclusive right to use a commercial name as a means of individualization of his/its enterprise in any manner not conflicting with a law (exclusive right to a commercial name), including by means of posting the commercial name on billboards, letterhead paper, bills and other documents, in announcements and advertisements, on goods or on the packages thereof, if the name has sufficient distinctiveness of characters and if its use by the right holder for the purpose of individualizing his/its enterprise is renowned within a certain territory.

2. It is prohibited to use a commercial name capable of misleading as to the belonging of an enterprise to a certain person, for instance a name similar to the extent of confusion with a company name, trademark or a commercial name protected by an exclusive right that is owned by another person whose exclusive right had come into being earlier.

3. A person that has violated the rules of Item 2 of the present article shall terminate on the right holder's demand to use the commercial name and reimburse the right holder for the damages caused.

4. An exclusive right to a commercial may pass to another person (for instance, under a contract, in line of universal succession or on other grounds established by a law) only within the enterprise for whose individualization it is being used.
If a right holder uses a commercial name to individualize several enterprises the transfer to another person of the exclusive right to the commercial name within one of the enterprises shall deprive the right holder of the use of this commercial name to individualize the rest of his/its enterprises.

5. A right holder may grant to another person a right to use his/its commercial name in the procedure and on the terms set out in a contract of lease of an enterprise (Article 656) or a contract of franchise (Article 1027).

 

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