March 10, 2017
In 2015 we discovered that the fonts of our library have been used for several years by the well-known insurance company RESO-Garantia: printed materials of the company, as well as official website included them. At the same time, the company did not appear in the database of license holders, so we suggested them to buy a font license at a standard price. However, we couldn't reach an agreement, so, with the support of INTELLECT-С lawyers, we filed a lawsuit on copyright infringement of fonts. Compensation, as permitted by law, was requested in the amount of doubled license cost. Our interests were defended in court by Maxim Labzin, Partner of INTELLECT-С, the head of practice in resolving disputes related to intellectual property. During the consideration of the case, the courts of first instance and the appellate instance recognized both the plaintiff's rights to the fonts and the fact of the insurance company's breach, but reduced the amount of compensation by 10 times, without any explanation indicating that such a sum is considered commensurate. INTELLECT-С lawyers did not agree with this and appealed to the Intellectual Property Court. Referring to the recent Decree of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of December 13, 2016, adopted in the case on the verification of a number of provisions of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation on compensation for violations of exclusive rights, Maxim Labzin noted that compensation should fulfill the function of preventing future offenses, showing that it is simply not profitable to repeat them. If, however, compensation, as in this case, is 5 times less than the usual license fee due to a court decision, there can be no question of any prevention of violations. On the contrary, it becomes more profitable to break than to buy a license. On January 18, 2017, the Intellectual Property Court granted the INTELLECT-C cassation appeal in the interests of our company: in respect of the amount of the compensation awarded, the judicial acts were canceled and the case was sent for a new consideration, in part, the recognition of the insurance company RESO-Garantia by the offender the acts are upheld.
Decree of the Court of Intellectual Property