The performance from year to year

Objective

A large pharmaceutical company decided to recover 1.6 billion rubles in lost profits from its competitor. The competitor had abused the right to trademark registration, depriving our client of selling a medicament for 18 months. When considering the case for the first time, the appellate court did not support our client’s position, considering that abusing the right had not caused it any losses. The court of appeal returned the case for a new trial. The client turned to us for assistance as there was a risk that at the new trial the court might refuse to collect the lost profits since the practice of recovering lost profit is only developing in Russia.

Resolution

At the new trial we succeeded in convincing our client that it was necessary to strengthen the evidence base by carrying out an economic evaluation, requesting statistical data about the increase in the competitor’s sales and the drop in our client’s sales during the period of abuse of the said right. An economic evaluation that was conducted confirmed that our client had lost considerable profits. As a result, the court was presented indisputable evidence of losses. In the framework of the new trial, the courts of all jurisdictions, including the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, agreed that the lost profits should be recovered precisely in the amount that had been claimed.

Result

The case became one of the few in the practice of Russian courts where the claims of collecting lost profits were fully satisfied. The faultlessness of the evidence collected for the new trial allowed our client to recover the inflicted damage in full and effectively punish its rival for unfair play in the market.