In 2006, our firm successfully organized the first ever wide-scale meeting of the international legal community with the best Local Counsel law firms from the CIS economic region. The first CIS Local Counsel Forum took place in Kiev in June 2006 and the second meeting took place in Baku, Azerbaijan, in June 2007. We are pleased to announce that the third CIS Local Counsel Forum will take place in St. Petersburg, Russia on June 25-27, 2008, hosted by the leading Russian law firm of Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners. To register please click here.

Welcome to the home page of RULG-Ukrainian Legal Group, P.A. This site aims to provide you with detailed information about our firm, the legal services we provide, our attorneys, and important legal developments in Ukraine and the CIS economic region.

Traditionally, in this letter, we provide an overview of our firm's news and achievements over the past year, and we are happy to say that 2007 was the busiest year ever for our practice and for our clients. A number of interesting projects and landmark deals were implemented and many more are contemplated for 2008. We have further developed our natural resources and production sharing agreements practice. "Ukrainian Law Firms 2008: Handbook for Foreign Clients", published by Yuridicheskaya Practika, features our article entitled "Overview of the Licensing Regime for the Use of Subsoil in Ukraine in 2007". Our clients and competitors alike praise our law firm for its profound experience in such practice areas as investment, mergers & acquisitions, land deals, media, bankruptcy, labor and intellectual property protection, antimonopoly and competition legislation, and many other areas. The 2008 edition of the PLC Which Lawyer? Yearbook rates our firm "recognized" in the field of competition/anti-trust law, "recommended" in both corporate/M&A and dispute resolution and "highly recommended" in labor and employee benefits, and several of our attorneys were individually honored by being designated as "recommended" or "highly recommended" in various practice categories. Chambers describes us as "traditionally Westernised in outlook" and acknowledged that RULG-Ukrainian Legal Group, P.A., has always been recognized as having "particular strength in the IP field since its inception 15 years ago". Our firm is consistently named in the first top 20 in Ukraine in the annual Yuridicheskaya Practika rating, including for 2007.

Our attorneys have been actively involved in various professional activities: attending and speaking at international conferences, publishing articles on various aspects of Ukrainian law and participating in professional organizations and associations. Information on these activities is available on the respective pages of this site. Various professional and mass media outlets often seek our attorneys' opinions on a broad range of legal topics, and to share these opinions with you we have added a new "RULG in the Media" page to our Web site.

2007 saw the continuing success of the CIS Local Counsel Forum, an informal network of the leading business law firms of the CIS economic region, which our firm organized back in 2006. The second meeting of the Forum was successfully conducted in Baku, Azerbaijan in June 2007, and the third meeting is being co-organized by our firm together with the leading Russian law firm of Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev & Partners in St. Petersburg on June 25-27, 2008. The Forum brings together more than 150 top business lawyers from the ten CIS countries and from around the world. Detailed information about the Forum is available at http://www.rulg.com/cisforum/index.asp. Especially for the Forum, RULG prepared a brochure with a collection of our best publications, which we are pleased to make available on the "Collection of Selected Publications" page of this Web site.

As always, however, our most exciting and rewarding experience has been in working on behalf of our clients. Highlights from 2007 include:

• Ongoing representation of our international corporate clients, including setting up companies, drafting and negotiating numerous M&A deals, conducting due diligence, maintaining our firm's 100% success rate in obtaining antimonopoly clearances, advising on securities transactions, completing several transfers of industrial property (trademarks and technology), representing clients before Ukrainian regulators, resolving commercial and labor disputes and so much more.
• Completing the legal portion of the OECD-EU Project on Improving the Conditions for Enterprise Development and the Investment Climate for Domestic and International Investors in Ukraine. In addition to previously completing a comprehensive Report on the Ukrainian business legal environment, our firm organized and led several OECD Workshops on the Legal Framework for Business Operation in Ukraine and drafted a Bill on Regulatory Governance, aimed at streamlining the permits system and cutting red tape. Information on the Project can be found on the "OECD-EU Project for Ukraine" page of this site.
• Winning in April 2007 a major victory on behalf of our client, Mars Inc., in a ground-breakinggroundbreaking unfair competition case. For the first time in Ukraine’s legal history, a violation based solely on color was recognized by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMC) as an act of unfair competition. This precedent opens the way for legitimate rightholders to successfully protect their IP rights in Ukraine against color-based unfair competition. The AMC treated this case as one of its most important priorities, as was reflected at the hearing, which took place in the main auditorium of the AMC and was attended by its most senior officials, including the Chairman of the AMC, Mr. Oleksiy Kostusiev. In his closing address, Mr. Kostusiev characterized the case as a very important first precedent for protecting rightholders against such unfair acts of infringers, which had not been punished in Ukraine previously. He commented on the difficulty of considering the case and also mentioned other infringements of well-known trademarks of Mars Inc., which were terminated with the help of the AMC. RULG Partner Ms. Tamara Lukanina worked on this case, which was widely covered in the business media. An article on the case, published in the AMC official journal, is available for download in the original Ukrainian version and in English translation.
• Co-organizing, together with a prominent Azeri law firm, Fina LLC, the third INTA interactive seminar "Mediation as an Alternative Method for Commercial Dispute Resolution", aimed at promoting the use of commercial mediation as the most progressive ADR method, in Baku on 22 June 2007. Detailed information on these seminars is available on the "Conferences and Presentations" and "IP Rights" pages of this site.

We look forward to a very busy and successful 2008 and to having more opportunities to assist you in your business endeavors in Ukraine and other CIS countries.

We appreciate the time you are taking to review our home page and hope its contents prove useful. Please feel free to contact us with your comments, questions, or suggestions.

Sincerely yours,
Irina Paliashvili
President