Russia is preparing a mechanism to seize foreign intellectual property, the Ukrainian Foreign Intelligence Service reports.
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Novak has announced that the Ministry of Economic Development, together with Rospatent, is developing a mechanism for “external temporary management” of patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property (IP) assets of foreign companies from “unfriendly” countries.
International lawyers openly call this an institutionalized theft of intellectual property, targeting companies that exited the Russian market after the 2022 war against Ukraine.
How Russia plans to license IKEA, Apple, and other global giants
In simple terms, the state will appoint a “manager” who can issue licenses to Russian manufacturers to use foreign brands and technologies without the owner’s permission.
Russia already has a mechanism for compulsory patent licensing through the courts, mainly applied in the pharmaceutical sector, which formally aligns with the WTO TRIPS rules.
However, the new plan goes much further, covering trademarks, software, and media content—IP categories where value is determined by reputation and consumer trust.
Kremlin plans to legally institutionalize large-scale innovation
There is practically no analog of this mechanism in global practice. The new Russian rules would allow the state to fully control the commercial value of foreign brands, software, and content without the owner’s consent.
This step could pave the way for large-scale legal exploitation of foreign technologies and company reputations in the Russian market, creating a precedent with no global equivalent.
