COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT CASES IN RUSSIA
1. A Russian Court has called computer pirates criminal outlaws.
In March this year two computer pirates in Russia were convicted by the Russian court. The pirates were found guilty of committing crime described in art. 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. As the punishment the court set the fine in the amount of 30 thou. rubles in the first case and 32 thou. rubles in the second case. The violators were amnested from the punishment. It should be noted that there is no amnesty for those who committed analogous crimes in 1998. By the way, for sale of non-licensed products there is not only fine. For the repeated committing of an analogous crime the outlaw might be imprisoned for as much as 5 years.
2. Alleged copyright infringement under criminal investigation
Another case of violation of trade mark and copyrights is even more astonishing. The Avanta+ publishing house issues a series of “Encyclopaedia for Children”, the super cover of the edition was registered as a trademark. A former employee of the firm established another company and started to publish another edition “Encyclopaedia for children and youths”. After that “Avanta +” raised a civil and criminal suit. The editor of the second encyclopaedia was said to have infringed on copyright and trademark rights of Avanta+ and even spent several months in prison during the criminal investigation. Thanks to the activity of her lawyer she was released but the criminal case has not been decided yet. Read more »
Filed under: copyright infringement | No Comments »
