“Business company for the production of chocolates, candies and bakery “PIONIR” ltd has been present at the market for 100 years as the producer of sweets. The protection of intellectual property started being a topic for consideration back in 1995. Before that, a very small number of signs had been protected. The reason for the initiation of the procedure for protection was to prevent the infringement of intellectual property by another legal or natural person and to protect the originality and design of packages and the look of the products and the very title of the product itself.
The protection of originality, or the sign that marks the product must be conducted in the country and abroad, i.e in the countries of export. The protection in the countries of export is the only way to prevent not only competition, but also local distributors on those territories to protect the sign in their own name or to utilize it without authorization. “Pionir” therefore protected and duly registered internationally the trademarks for the territory of the ex SFRY and the EU countries, including : NEGRO, MEDENO SRCE, PIONIR, KIDY, GALEB, milk chocolate, etc. Thanks to that, the buyers in the countries of export, recognize in our brands the quality products created by the carefully selected ingredients, in the conditions of improved and modern technology. The trust of our buyers motivates us to maintain the constant level of quality, so that the buyers would return to the Pionir, Medeno srce and other products.
Our products are easily recognized both in the Republic of Serbia and abroad, starting primarily with the very name of the business company “PIONIR”, so the title and its look was the first thing we have protected. Today, we have 150 valid trademarks in the country and the most famous and best selling are: NEGRO BOMBONS, MEDENO SRCE, HAZLENUT CHOCOLATE, GALEB CHOCOLATE and many other products. The business company takes care about the very image of the brand, so it also often redesigns the package to keep it attractive for the buyers, of course with the recognizable quality of our products.
After the registration, we had several incidents of unauthorized use of our trademarks, in particular MEDENO SRCE and NEGRO, but we immediately contacted the competent bodies (trade inspection and the court) in order to prevent further distribution and sale of such products with the compulsory withdrawal of such products from the market.
The search of the data base of trademarks is something without which one can not imagine the marketing of a new product. As a matter of fact, when the legal service gets an instruction from the marketing service for the protection of a new product by a new name, is has the obligation to make the search of trademarks. The search of trademarks serves to check if somebody already in the class 30 of the International Classification of goods and Services has protected a sign which is the same or similar to the new sign. We do that in order not to file needlessly the request for the registration of trademarks and pay expenses.
We must emphasize that in the segment of the protection of intellectual property in our business company particular attention is paid to the IP. Our management has realized the significance and importance of the protection of our brands. The protection brings us multifold benefit. It gives us security as a firm to use and market our brands and it makes our product recognizable on the market all over the country and the world so many customers come to us for that reason also.”
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Doris Markovic, Pionir