The Ukrainian Prime Minister is ready to be sued over his trademark.
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The leader of the Union of Anarchists of Ukraine, Vyacheslav Azarov, is ready to sue Prime Minister Mykola Azarov over the registration of his trademark.
As a reminder, Mykola Azarov recently registered the "Azarov" trademark. This was done so that the prime minister could obtain social media accounts under his name or prohibit others from using such accounts.
Furthermore, N. Azarov's press secretary, Vitaliy Lukyanenko, also stated that no one will now be able to register a website under the prime minister's name (presumably referring to the .UA domain) without the prime minister's permission. Currently, the azarov.ua domain is taken and displays a park page.
In response, Vyacheslav Azarov stated that the Ukrainian prime minister "is trying to silence all those with the same last name. In our case, this is also political censorship, and we will fight it—even in court."
Other politicians also have their own trademarks. Viktor Yushchenko has the trademarks Yushchenko, V. Yushchenko, Viktor Yushchenko, Yushchenko Bloc, For Yushchenko, Our Ukraine Bloc, and others, but some of these, registered between 2002 and 2005, were never renewed. Yulia Tymoshenko, Serhiy Tihipko, Viktor Baloha, and several other members of parliament also have trademarks.
There are approximately 170 registered users on Facebook whose accounts use the word "Azarov," ten of whom are Nikolai. On VKontakte, there are over 5,000 users with the last name "Azarov," 24 of whom are Nikolai from Ukraine, who have set their profile names to "Azarov."
However, registering the trademark does not give Azarov any advantage when registering on social media. The only restriction on such resources is the prohibition on posting false personal information or creating an account in someone else's name without their permission.
In addition to the .UA domain, the AZAROV domain name is registered in other domain zones. Specifically, the domains azarov.com.ua, azarov.com, azarov.net, and azarov.org are already taken.
