RUSSIA had never been shy of ripping off Western brand names until Alec Gallup flew to Moscow to win an important ruling against two Russian companies trading under his surname.

In a blow to Russia’s “fake market” the Gallup Organisation, the US polling company, has won a ruling banning two companies from using its name until a trial is held to decide a trademark dispute.

Moscow has already produced a “Burger Queen”, now closed more due to the quality of its burgers than a copyright issue, and a “Tanya Grotter” book, a take-off of Harry Potter. There is even an advertising company registered as The Time’s in Moscow.

The Gallup name was first used erroneously in Russia in 1994 when a Finnish company called Suomen Gallup set up TNS Gallup Media, TNS Gallup Ad Fact and TNS Gallup St Petersburg, which later closed down.

Alec Gallup, 75, the vice-chairman of the company founded by his father, whose polls are used in every US presidential race, flew to Moscow for the court hearing last week.

He told the Moscow Times: “Can you imagine what would have happened if you had done something like that with Coca-Cola or a major brand of that kind? We just could not believe what these people were doing.”

Happy to have protected its name for the time being, the Gallup Organisation plans to open an office in Moscow in the near future.

Big businesses in Russia have been dealing with trademark disputes ever since communism fell and the market became a lawless playground for entrepreneurs struggling with an influx of foreign imports.

A first-time visitor to Moscow could imagine he had landed in a warped version of a Western city. Having picked up a copy of Afisha, which bears an uncanny resemblance to London’s Time Out magazine, he could make his way to Shokoladnitsa, a Russian version of Costa Coffee, where punters could well have their noses deep in the Tanya Grotter book, although J. K. Rowling has won an injunction halting its sale. The story of Afisha magazine is equally opportunistic. Its founder, Andrew Paulson, was in negotiations with Time Out for more than a year to launch Time Out Moscow. On the eve of the contract signing he disappeared, only to reappear a year later wielding the glossy first edition of Afisha.

His magazine was rich in the know-how he had gleaned from Time Out’s London office and his magazine is now the biggest-selling entertainment guide in Moscow. It also publishes a series of travel books very like Time Out’s guides.

Other entrepreneurs have been canny enough to profit from the pitfalls in Russia’s post-communist market. One Siberian firm launched a soap powder immediately after the economic crash in August 1998, called “Normal Washing Powder”. Its packaging was identical to the “Normal Washing Powder” used in a Procter & Gamble television advert as a comparison to the powder under promotion.

The “Normal Washing Powder” was in a plain white box, which appealed to Russians who had been hit by the crash and lost their faith in fancy Western labels.

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