Google Loses ‘Droid’ Trademark Infringement Appeal in Russia

Google Inc. lost its bid to throw out a trademark from a local Russian business that has the word droid in its name.

An appeals panel for Russia’s Federal Service for Intellectual Property, known as Rospatent, rejected Google’s objections that the trademark for Droidne infringed its trademarks for Android and Android One. The regulator’s decision, released Jan. 31, said there was not enough similarity between them to create a likelihood of confusion among consumers.

Rospatent awarded the trademark last year to Mars, an online smartphone retailer. Google filed objections in June 2018, saying the mark was an abbreviation of Android ...