20.12.2014 Alina Kozmina, associate at Maxima Legal

Rights Holders can Block Infringements of Copyright and Related Rights Out of Court

Since 1 May 2015 Federal Law No.364-F3 of 24.11.2014 (hereinafter “the Law”), introducing alterations to the legislation on information, has offered rights holders a new, out-of-court method of protecting their rights to intellectual property. This applies to infringements of copyright and related rights by means of posting information on the Internet. Although every rights holder still has the right to demand that a website operator restricts access to illegally promulgated information by court order, such a demand may now also be made before the case comes to court. For this purpose it is necessary to forward to the owner of the website a declaration concerning the infringement of copyright or related rights.

The required contents of such a declaration are established by the Law – an exhaustive list of the information a rights holder should provide in order for the declaration to be accepted by the owner of the website (information about the copyright items posted on the website without permission, the address of the website on the Internet, and so on).

The Law allows for only one instance in which the owner of the website may delay the removal of illegally posted information: the presence of inaccuracies or mistakes in the declaration or the absence of the necessary information required by the Law. In this event the owner of the website has the right, within 24 hours of receiving the declaration, to forward to the deponent notification of the necessity to define the information more precisely. Importantly, the legislator does not allow for the possibility of abuse on the part of the owner of the website – the notification may be forwarded to the deponent only once.

Within 24 hours of receiving the precise information or of receiving the initially correctly drafted declaration, the owner of the website shall be obliged to remove information posted without the permission of the rights holder.

The Law also envisages the possibility of permanent restriction of access to websites on which such information has been posted illegally on more than one occasion.

See: Federal Law No.364-F3 of 24.11.2014 “On the Introduction of Alterations in the Federal Law ‘On Information, Information Technologies and Protection of Information’ and the Civil Procedural Code of the Russian Federation”