What Article 157⁴ actually covers
When an application for a patent, or for the registration of a design, is filed with Sakpatenti, the technical or design solution described in it is not yet public information. It becomes public at one defined moment: when Sakpatenti publishes the data about that application in its official bulletin. Article 157⁴ of the Georgian Code of Administrative Offences protects the window between those two events. Deliberately disclosing the substance of the application during that window is a separate administrative offence.
The article is not aimed at the applicant. Its text expressly carves out disclosure by the applicant or by the applicant's successor in title. If the person who filed the application, or the person to whom the rights passed, chose to make the solution public, Article 157⁴ does not reach that act. In a real file, two questions decide the outcome: who disclosed the substance, and when.
The sanction the article sets
Article 157⁴ has two parts, and each carries its own range of fines.
- Part 1 — deliberate disclosure of the substance of the application before the data about it is published in the official bulletin: a fine of 1,000 to 3,000 lari.
- Part 2 — the same act committed repeatedly, within one year of the imposition of an administrative penalty: a fine of 3,000 to 5,000 lari.
Both parts state a range rather than a single fixed figure, so the exact amount is settled in the decision itself. That matters more than it first appears: the question is not only whether the act happened, but how it is assessed inside the boundaries the law allows. It also matters that the repeat limb is bounded in time. The text ties it to one year from the imposition of an administrative penalty, so the date on which the earlier penalty was imposed is a fact worth establishing precisely.
"Deliberate" is the load-bearing word
The article describes the disclosure as deliberate. That single word reshapes the whole case, because the enquiry is not only into whether information travelled, but into whether the disclosure was conscious. An accidental leak, a technical error, or information a third party worked out independently present a different factual picture from the one the article describes. Where this charge is brought, the evidence of intent is usually where the argument lives, and it is usually documentary.
The article does not list categories of people either. It describes an act and excludes exactly one group — the applicant and the applicant's successor in title. Everyone else is defined by what they did rather than by the role they hold, so the question in a real file is factual: did this person deliberately disclose the substance of a pending, unpublished application. That framing is why such cases so often turn on the paperwork governing access to the filing — engagement terms, confidentiality clauses, internal handling rules — rather than on recollection.
What to check in the file
Several points follow directly from the wording of Article 157⁴ and should be established early:
- the date on which Sakpatenti published the data about the application in the official bulletin — after publication, the act this article describes can no longer be committed;
- who made the disclosure, and whether that person is the applicant or the applicant's successor in title, both of whom the text excludes;
- whether what was disclosed was in fact the substance of the application, rather than general or already known information;
- for a part 2 charge, whether an earlier administrative penalty is documented, and whether the new act falls within one year of its imposition.
Where a lawyer changes the outcome
Cases under Article 157⁴ are unusual: they sit where intellectual property meets administrative liability, and they are built on documents far more often than on witnesses. Representation normally works along three lines — reconstructing an exact chronology, addressing the question of intent, and arguing a position inside the statutory range instead of accepting its upper end by default. Where the dispute has a commercial background, such as a breached confidentiality agreement or an employment obligation, the administrative case usually runs alongside a civil claim, and the two are best planned together rather than in sequence.
For the applicant whose filing was exposed, the article adds a further route of protection, but its limits should be seen clearly. Article 157⁴ provides for a fine and says nothing about compensation for loss, which remains a separate claim on separate grounds. The article likewise sets no appeal deadline of its own; the time limit and the procedure follow from other provisions of the Code and from the procedure recited in the decision you received, so reading that part of the document as soon as it arrives is the sensible first step.
What to bring to a first consultation
Bring everything you already hold: the administrative offence report or the decision, correspondence about the application, any confidentiality or non-disclosure agreements, employment or service contracts, and anything showing when and in what form the information travelled — messages, emails, presentation files, meeting notes. An extract confirming the bulletin publication date is equally useful. The more precise the chronology, the clearer the position, and that is true on both sides of this article: for the person accused of disclosing, and for the applicant whose filing was exposed.