RBC and Vedomosti will meet again in court

    The most striking media scandal last year - the confrontation between Vedomosti and RBC - continues to develop, overgrown with spectacular new details. As you know, in December last year, the Vedomosti newspaper filed a lawsuit against RBC Information Systems for copyright infringement: about a hundred texts on Quote.ru website duplicated Vedomosti materials without reference to the source - for this the newspaper demanded 257 million rubles compensation. In July of this year, the Moscow Arbitration Court received a lawsuit demanding an even more impressive compensation amount: this time, RBC holding opposed the “systematic copyright infringement”, filed a lawsuit against Vedomosti in the amount of 286.11 million rubles.

    “The lawsuit was filed by the company’s lawyers in response to the illegal reproduction, distribution and processing of articles borrowed from RBC’s paid informational and analytical tape from 2002 to 2005,” RBC said in a statement. In total, about 130 cases of violations were discovered, but only 50 of them became the subject of the lawsuit. “Taking into account the length and gross nature of the violation of exclusive rights, RBC considers proportional compensation in the amount of 286 million 110 rubles,” the company concludes.

    Vedomosti is perplexed about this lawsuit. “It deals with the materials of the“ Briefly ”heading, which our employees take from news agency tapes, including from RBC’s open tape,” explains Elena Bystrova, PR director of the publication. - These materials are usually in 3-6the lines reveal factual information - but the facts are not protected by copyright. Moreover, under each of the materials the source is always indicated by us, be it RBC or Interfax, proof of this is printed newspapers. ”

    According to Elena, they are not preparing new lawsuits against RBC Vedomosti: "We are all waiting for our main lawsuit to be considered - so far this has not happened, because RBC is constantly taking some kind of procedural tricks."

    Yuri Rovensky, CEO of RBC, explained the reason that prompted the filing of the lawsuit, as follows: “The company is quite loyal to the authorized use of free information from the RBC website by other media, given the unity of the information space. Moreover, we have always approached the issue of citation as an effective tool for joint promotion. Studying the materials of the newspaper Vedomosti, our lawyers discovered many facts of the illegal use of intellectual property of RBC. It is these facts and the hypocritical position of Vedomosti that made us start the trial. ”

    A preliminary hearing is scheduled for August 8.

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