LAWYERS TOLD WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF VIOLATION OF THE RIGHTS TO THE SITE

The information age has given humanity not only new opportunities, but, unfortunately, new "crimes". Recently, more and more unscrupulous citizens and companies abuse access to a huge number of different resources and "steal" the design and content of other people's sites.

Before going to court, the lawyer, the head of the intellectual property protection practice of Afonin, Bozhor and Partners LLC, Alexander Afonin, recommends that you file a claim with the site administrator. Usually, the sites contain an email address, and sometimes the data of the violator (for example, the name of the legal entity and address). The claim can be sent by e-mail.

"But if the copyright holder and the violator are business entities (individual entrepreneurs, companies), it is mandatory to send a claim by paper mail, the waiting period for a response is 30 calendar days from the date of sending," Afonin notes.

If the data of the violator is missing on the site, it is necessary to send a request to the domain name registrar about the violation with a request to provide the data of the violator for applying to the court. The Registrar usually responds only to requests from the court, law enforcement agencies, persons with special powers (lawyers, patent attorneys in accordance with their specialty).

Cases of plagiarism of content and website design are found even in the legal field. It would seem that lawyers themselves should perfectly understand the consequences of intellectual property infringement, and even more so not to get involved with strong players in the legal market. As told in the press service of the ANO "International Law Firm "Solicitors, Barristers and Attorneys", the content of their company's website has been repeatedly copied in whole or in part by other representatives of the field: "The site has been in existence for more than 10 years, it has a lot of valuable legal information for clients, this makes it an attractive source of information for those who I don't have my own accumulated practice yet. It is easy to detect plagiarism, there are special verification services for this. Our employees regularly monitor such moments. In case of detection of the theft of the site or content, first of all, we choose the path of peaceful settlement of the issue. For example, there was a case when the site pages were copied by an inexperienced designer who was hired to create a site by one of the regional law firms. After negotiations with the domain owner, all the materials were deleted, and the company apologized. We have treated this incident with understanding."

But it was not always possible to resolve the situation peacefully.

"There have been situations when the owner of a copyright infringing site is not ready for negotiations or reacts inadequately. For example, in our practice there was a case when the violators did not even bother to remove the company name from some pages, but still claimed that this was their author's work. In this case, the tactics of protecting their rights are already tough. In any case, we recommend that, upon detection of borrowed content from your site, immediately prepare an evidence base to protect your rights. Notarized screenshots of the site pages, information about the owners of the sites, initial developments and content files confirming that this content/design layouts belong to you. Simultaneously with the legal protection of rights, immediately send a letter to the representatives of the hosting of the infringing site with information about the violation, supported by an evidence base," the Solicitors, Barristers and Attorneys told the International Law Company

As the company added, hosting companies usually react quickly and block the violator's site until the circumstances are clarified. This will avoid reputational risks associated with the illegal use of your data.

In addition to protecting rights in the arbitration court and applying to hosting sites, lawyers recommend submitting documents to Roskomnadzor to block an identical site or texts, photos and videos on it.

"This can be done through a special service used by IT rights lawyers. It allows you to block sites that violate your rights fairly quickly - within up to 14 working days. They will simply stop being shown on the Internet on the territory of the Russian Federation. At the same time, you can apply to the court with a statement of claim and demand not only compensation for the violation of rights, but also to ask for compensation for the damage caused by the violation. In case another company has stolen the name of your site, it is important that your site name matches your brand, your registered trademark. If you have not registered a trademark, then formally the company that stole the name has the same rights to it as you. To avoid this, it is better to register your trademark, company name, logos and brand as early as possible," said Tatiana Zubkova, a forensic expert in computer and technical expertise.

Lawyers also remind that compensation for violation of exclusive rights can reach 5 million rubles per violation. In addition, the copyright holder may file an application to the court to restrict access to the Internet resource.

Photo: Freepik