Another Misfortune of “Narodnaya Volya” :: Charter'97 :: News

The famous manufacturer of lady’s underwear Syarhei Atroschanka (a company “Serge”) does not give up his dream of becoming a media magnate, the Belarusian Business Newspaper informs. While the newspapers are publishing as hot news or as a joke the information that Atroschanka wants to buy shares of the English newspaper “Daily Telegraph”, Atroschanka has registered under his name the trade name more famous in Belarus, The “Narodnaya Volya”. And consequently demanded the editor-in-chief of the “Narodnaya Volya”, Iosif Syaredzich, to stop issuing the well-known independent newspaper.

The trademark “Narodnaya Volya” was assigned to Syarhei Atroschanka, the owner of the firm “Serge” and the newspaper “Obozrevatel” by the National Center of Intellectual Property. The bureaucrats were not embarrassed by the detail that de facto this trademark exists for many years already, and Mr. Atroschanka had no relation to it. The “Belarusian patent” declares that Iosif Syaredzich, the founder of the newspaper “Narodnaya Volya”, can challenge this decision in the Council of Appeal of this institution. We cannot receive more detailed comments making reference to the fact that the decision is not published officially. However, it has not stopped Atroschanka from applying to the prosecutor’s office with the demand to stop issuing of the “Narodnaya Volya”.

According to Iosif Syaredzich, it is not excluded that it is Atroschanka’s revenge for calling his newspaper a “tendentious tabloid” in the “Narodnaya Volya”. Syarhei Atroschanka himself refused to comment on his actions.