Ukraine loses fight to trademark ‘Russian warship, go f**k yourself’ slogan

The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled Wednesday that the slogan “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” cannot be claimed by Ukraine as an EU trademark. 

The accidental war slogan was at the center of a heated trademark battle between Ukraine’s State Border Guard and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). 

The phrase was first coined by a Ukrainian soldier responding to the Russian navy’s demand to surrender as it prepared to attack Snake Island in the Black Sea in the early hours of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

In the years since, the phrase has become a symbol of Kyiv’s resilience against Moscow. 

But Ukraine claimed that authorship of the phrase should belong to Kyiv, to avoid anyone else claiming the trademark and profiting off the slogan. Commercial products featuring variations of the phrase “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” are being sold on several shopping platforms.

However, according to the EU’s General Court, the phrase — which Kyiv attempted to trademark in Russian and English — “is not perceived as an indication of commercial origin,” accepting the argument of the EU’s intellectual property enforcers, who claimed late last year that the slogan did not meet the requirements to become a trademark.

The Luxembourg-based court considered that the phrase “had become very quickly a symbol of Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression,” the ruling said. But it added that a sign “is incapable of fulfilling the essential function of a trade mark if the average consumer does not perceive, in its presence, the indication of the origin of the goods or services, but only a political message.”