MOSCOW, June 17 (RAPSI, Sergei Feklyunin) - The Intellectual Property Court (IPC) will start working on July 1, the plenary meeting of the Supreme Commercial Court said in a draft resolution published on its website.

The SCC plenary meeting will discuss the draft on June 18.

In December 2011, then President Dmitry Medvedev signed a federal law amending the laws on Russia’s judicial system and on commercial courts in view of the establishment of the Intellectual Property Court. The law sets out the IPC’s place in the Russian commercial court system, its powers, the cases it can hear and the procedure for their hearing in the first and appeals instances.

The new approach to settling intellectual property disputes divides cases into two groups: lawsuits filed to establish the rights holder, and cases involving copyright violation.

The first group includes appeals against the decisions of the Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent), to be heard by the IPC as a first instance court without the right of appeal. Appeals to reverse verdicts are to be heard by the IPC Presidium.

The second group includes cases of copyright violation involving trademarks and trade names, which are heard by commercial courts and commercial courts of appeal as first and second instance courts. Appeals to reverse verdicts in these cases are to be heard by the IPC Board.

The Intellectual Property Court was established in April to hear intellectual property cases both as a court of first instance and as a supreme court of appeals.