The Court of Appeals upheld the order to conduct a handwriting analysis in the Marchuk case
The Ternopil Court of Appeals has dismissed the appeal filed by Ihor Apostol and Serhiy Pavlenko against the city and district court’s ruling to conduct a handwriting analysis of the signatures in the case involving artist Ivan Marchuk.
This was reported by Ukrinform.
Presiding Judge Oleksandr Kostiv announced: “The appellate court has ruled to dismiss the appeal filed by Ihor Mykhailovych Apostol and Serhiy Petrovych Pavlenko. The ruling of the Ternopil City and District Court dated February 2, 2026, shall remain unchanged.”
The City District Court had previously ordered a forensic handwriting analysis by the Lviv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise to determine whether the signatures on behalf of Igor Mykhailovych Apostol on License Agreement No. 1 dated May 21, 2020, were made by him personally.
The case to invalidate the license agreement was opened on July 11, 2025. The defendants in the case are Serhiy Petrovych Pavlenko, Mykhailo Mykolayovych Synytsia, Ihor Mykhailovych Apostol, and Tamara Oleksiivna Strypko.
As Ivan Marchuk himself reported on his official page, this concerns an attempt by other individuals to seize the copyrights to his works.
As a reminder, the prominent Ukrainian artist Ivan Marchuk announced the forced suspension of his exhibition activities in the United Kingdom and Switzerland due to fraudulent actions related to the infringement of his copyrights.
Earlier, Ivan Marchuk, People’s Artist of Ukraine and recipient of the “National Legend of Ukraine” award, stated that there had been an attempt to appropriate the rights to use images of his paintings.
