Fear Stokes The Imagination

While having national exhaustion of rights Russian government issued a list of goods allowed for parallel import. This sparked off a number of publications frowning upon one more step allegedly squeezing intellectual property rights in Russia.

The publications ignore the fact that parallel import is normal practice in a number of countries. The reason for partial allowance of parallel import was that a number companies left Russia and thus emptied the market of some products. So some measures to satisfy the demand were justified. Notwithstanding, some people misrepresented this as allowing counterfeit goods to be brought to the country which is absolutely unacceptable.

The list of allowed goods is long and it was prepared by the people from the Ministry of Industry and Trade. A closer look at the list shows that some items therein may be confusing. The compilers of the list admitted that, and from the beginning they stated that the list would be reviewed and