Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers at a meeting on Wednesday approved two bills related to fight against 'patent trolling' and improvement of protection of rights to industrial samples and trademarks.

First Deputy Prime Minister, Economic Development and Trade Minister of Ukraine Stepan Kubiv wrote on his Facebook page that the proposed bills are intended to improve protection of rights of Ukrainian designers. This will help to restore Ukrainian industry and improve the investment attractiveness of the state.

"All these changes would provide for the functioning of the effective tool to fight 'patent trolling' via the introduction of the procedure for administrative challenging patents issued for industrial samples and ensure the observation of requirements of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement in protection of rights to trademarks and industrial samples," Kubiv said.

He said that the proposed innovations help to submit applications in the electronic form and increase the expiration term for intellectual rights to industrial samples from 15 to 25 years. The bills also specify the grounds for declaring invalid registration of a trademark to prevent infringements in the sphere. The procedure for registering the collective trademark is foreseen and the procedure for providing protection under the international registration is revised.

Kubiv said that the government also proposed amendments to improve protection of rights to put together semiconductor products.

'Patent trolling' is a type of blackmail when the patent trolls - people or companies that misuse patents as a business strategy – have registered rights to intellectual property and do not use them in own production, as they do not produce anything.