THEY WANT TO BANKRUPT THE RUSSIAN "ZHDUN"

On May 5, the Moscow Arbitration Court received a bankruptcy claim of the company "CD Land Contact" (CD Land). The initiator of the insolvency case (no. A40-98185/2023) was a businesswoman Evgenia Sitnikova. The amount of claims in the court file has not yet been made public, and the claim itself has not yet been accepted for consideration.

The defendant firm became widely known in the legal community as the owner of the exclusive right to the image of "Zhdun". The company received it on the basis of a license signed in April 2017 with the sculptor Margaret van Brifort.

After that, CD Land repeatedly acted as a plaintiff in arbitration courts, defending its material interests.The Spartak hockey club, the Ozon marketplace, and the Megafon cellular network operator were subjected to a legal attack by the company.

In September 2021, Rusbankrot covered the details of one such case, which resulted in the bankruptcy of a souvenir manufacturer. The Fortes company then failed to come to an amicable agreement with the plaintiff, having been convicted of trademark infringement. In July 2019, the arbitration awarded the company a maximum compensation of 5 million rubles. After that, the company that produced notebooks and bags turned out to be insolvent and went bankrupt.

According to a number of lawsuits initiated by CD Land, it was not possible to prove the defendant's guilt. For example, the company failed to recover compensation from the social network VKontakte, which posted the image of Homunculus loxodontus (the original name of "Zhduna") in the form of digital stickers. In August 2020, the arbitration in St. Petersburg recognized the drawings made in the genre of parody or caricature, thereby not recognizing the company as a violator of exclusive copyright.

Evgenia Sitnikova's conflict with the defendant is connected with the case of the company "Igramir", against which the company filed a lawsuit in 2017. The lawsuit dragged on for several years because of a soft "Alien" sold as a toy in retail outlets of the retailer. CD Land bought 2 thousand copies of a soft toy, demanding in court for counterfeit payment of the full value of the goods (522 thousand), compensate for the violation of the exclusive right (908 thousand) and pay for the work of an expert (76 thousand).

At the beginning of 2021, Igramir won in court, supported by an appeal. An attempt by CD Land to appeal the decision in cassation in December 2021 was unsuccessful. The court found that "Igramir" was liquidated, which was recorded in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. Evgeniya Sitnikova received the right to reimbursement of court costs in the amount of 413 thousand from the liquidator, which was confirmed in the arbitration decision in August last year. The CDI Land Contact company could not appeal the assignment.

Photo by Wikipedia