It is doubtful if anyone in the Cleveland Cavaliers team from the NBA has heard of the Russian city of Kurgan in the south of the Urals or the bus manufacturing plant that operates there, but the new non-sports threat to Cleveland comes precisely from the unknown Kurgan.
The representatives of the Russian factory, whose name is KAVZ, are determined to deny the American basketball team the right to use its famous abbreviation Cavs (CAVS).
The strange conflict between the parties began in 2016, when the Russian company KAVZ, which belongs to the business empire of the oligarch Oleg Deripaska, requested to register its name as a registered trademark in order to sell throughout Russia, and perhaps even outside its borders, various types of merchandise, especially toys, games and similar products .
The Russian Patent Authority rejected the request due to the similarity in sound with the mark CAVS, which was registered in Russia by the NBA back in 1995. The words KAVZ and CAVS are written differently, but behave similarly, to the extent of the possibility of deception, the bus manufacturers were told.
The company Morgan did not give up - it appealed the ruling repeatedly, until it reached the Russian Supreme Court, but even in this high court, Cleveland had the upper hand.
KAVZ buses.
Fighting in the West, photo: from Twitter
Transformation in the shadow of war
It seemed that the last word was said in the battle between buses and basketball, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the escalating confrontation with the West that followed changed everything, including the relationship of legal forces, at least as far as the Russian legal system is concerned.
At Corgan, they realized that it was time to hit the rival from the NBA and decided to demand that the patent authority cancel the registered trademark of the team from Cleveland.
The lawyers of the bus factory decided to take advantage of the fact that the heads of the NBA league, like the owners of other global companies and brands, decided to stop commercial activity in Russia, as a punishment for its aggression against Ukraine.
If trademark owners boycott Russia, they will argue in court that they cannot expect Russia to protect it.
To this political reasoning it should be added that according to Russian law, ceasing the use of a trademark may result in the denial of the right to it.
As the suspension of NBA activity in Russia lengthens - and as of now, as long as the war in Ukraine continues and there is no reconciliation on the horizon, the boycott is not expected to end - the argument for not using the CAVS mark will only get stronger, to the delight of the Morgan company and its legal representatives.
Considering the atmosphere of war that prevails in Russia in relation to Western companies and brands, the chances of success of the attempt to ban Cleveland from using its name and trademark are quite good.
It is very possible that in the coming months, the team's jerseys and other products bearing the familiar CAVS inscription will be banned in Russia, and the NBA team will be ordered to pay compensation to an anonymous bus manufacturer.
After the Russian authorities forbade the original champagne producers from the French Champagne region to use the term "Champagne", and determined that the right to this term belongs exclusively to Russian wineries, no outcome, however improbable and illusory, can be ruled out.
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