The Russian Parliament has introduced a draft law according to which courts will have the ability to lower damages payable for infringements of exclusive intellectual property rights below the minimum figures established in the Russian Civil Code.  The proposed law relates to situations when one infringement touches upon a number of intellectual property rights; for which the right holder is entitled to compensation or damages.

At the same time, the draft law establishes a minimum limit for compensation for one infringement: 10,000 roubles. The authors of the proposed law suggest that the size of compensation should be determined by taking into account the circumstances of the case, the consequences and character of the infringement.  It is proposed that such an approach when calculating compensation will exclude situations compensation payable is manifestly unfair and disproportionate to the infringement.

Senior Associate at Maxima Legal, Maxim Ali, who specialises in intellectual property matters, commented that providing courts with more freedom to reduce compensation is justifiable, however, the current draft legislation has a number of inadequacies. The conditions for reducing compensation are rather abstract, and overall the draft law is more favourable for the person infringing intellectual property rights, when compared to the recent guidance from the Russian Constitutional Court, which is the source of the proposed changes to the Civil Code.

It is possible that in the event of a dispute, the Court will be able to reduce the compensation to the minimum level of 10,000 roubles. Accordingly a company seeking to protect its exclusive intellectual property rights might more cautiously approach issuing court proceedings.  From another side, companies who are defendants in such claims from right-holders will get an additional tool that can reduce the adverse effects of such legal disputes.

To read the full article (in Russian), please click on the following link.

On 28 July, news agency REGNUM published an article titled ‘Durov’s position does not match Russia’s laws’, which considered the issue of the potential blocking of the Telegram app.

At the present moment, the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov has agreed for the app to be include in the registry maintained by Roskomnadzor (the state regulator of the media); however, he has refused to comply with the requirements of Yarovaya’s law (a controversial law regarding regulation of the internet), as he considers this “technically unrealisable”.

Senior Associate at Maxima Legal, Maxim Ali, who specialises in IP/IT matters, explained to REGNUM, that Telegram is considered by Russian legislation to be an organisation that spreads information, which means that it is obligated to store and provide law enforcement agencies with logs of the exchange of messages between users.

Maxim also commented that the storage of exchanged information on the company’s servers which complies with measures for security and confidentiality of the data, does not amount to a breach of the secret correspondence to which Durov refers.  Such matters are regulated by federal law, and according to the Constitution can be reviewed by the Constitutional Court.

For the full version of the article, please see the following link.