ARMENIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Sarkis Knyazyan, Svetlana Mkrtchyan, Anahit Aloyan and Rita Parzyan, Concern Dialog
consumers. Owners of well-known trade marks may exclude others from using similar trade marks, regardless of the classes of trade mark. Copyright owners have the right to exclude oth - ers from using their works of authorship with - out their permission or any other works created based on their works (derivative works). The claims may be filed against direct, vicarious or contributory infringements. Trade mark and cop - yright infringements may also be accompanied with unfair competition claims. Armenian law is silent on such specific claims as dilution by blurring or dilution by tarnish - ment. However, trade mark owners (especially the owners of well-known trade marks) may file more general arguments related to distinctive - ness of their trade marks. They may claim that, if allowed, the use of trade marks that are likely to create associations with another trade mark (eg, by using similar imagery, colour schemes, or even language that subtly alludes to the other brand), especially by multiple businesses, may harm the distinctive characters of their trade marks. In addition, the Armenian law is silent on cyber-squatting. However, the trade mark law allows a trade mark owner to exclude others from using a registered trade mark in domain names. 7.3 Factors in Determining Infringement Trade mark owners have the exclusive right to authorise and/or exclude others from using their trade marks. Therefore, any unauthorised use of the mark in a manner listed below may consti - tute a trade mark infringement: • using an identical or a confusingly similar mark on goods or packaging;
• offering goods for sale, selling, or storing goods for the purpose of sale, or providing or offering services bearing the trade mark; • importing or exporting goods bearing the trade mark; • using the trade mark on documents or for advertising purposes; and • using an identical or similar trade mark on websites, including in domain names, even if the website associated with the domain name is inactive or contains no content. Copyright owners have the exclusive right to authorise and/or exclude others from using their works of authorship. Therefore, any unauthor - ised use of such work of authorship in a manner listed below may constitute a copyright infringe - ment of the copyright owners’ economic rights of: • reproduction; • distribution; • rental; • lending; • translation or creation of other derivative works (such as arrangement, rearrangement, adaptation and other transformations); • communication to the public; • public performance; • public display; • broadcasting or, simultaneous broadcasting, or re-broadcasting; and • transmission of a work by cable or by other means, etc. Copyright may also be infringed by infringing an author’s moral rights (non-economic rights) – eg, by making illegal/unauthorised alterations/ changes in the work, failing to use the author’s name on the work, etc.
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