Arbitration court of Moscow has ruled in favor of the HOLODILNIK.RU (customer "Zuykov and partners" LLC)

Cyprus company UCF Partners Limited filed a lawsuit on the protection of rights on audiovisual works to the  Arbitration court of Moscow against  Limited Liability Company "Edil-Import" (online store HOLODILNIK.RU), whose interests were represented by the lawyers of the company "Zuykov & partners" LLC.

On the plaintiff’s opinion, he is the owner of audiovisual works, which are the commercial videos with the timing of 5 seconds each. Plaintiff pointed out that defendant placed abovementioned commercial videos without plaintiff’s permission in the broadcast schedule of channel "Russia 1", "Ren TV", and "2x2" in the period from July to November 2013 under advertising company owned by LLC "Edil-Import" (online store HOLODILNIK.RU). Based on this the plaintiff asked the court to recover from the defendant compensation for violation of exclusive rights on audiovisual works in the amount of 461.640.000 (four hundred and sixty-one million six hundred forty thousand) rubles.

Representing the interests of the defendant in court, our lawyers disagreed with the plaintiff and provided in support of its position the arguments that the plaintiff has not proven the existence of his exclusive rights on the disputed rollers and fact of placing by defendant abovementioned commercial videos in broadcast schedule of Federal TV channels also has not proven. The plaintiff didn’t provide to the court any documented information about which commercial video, when and how many times video was airing. Due to this the requirement on collecting of compensation which amount is calculated based on the number of acts of public video broadcasting on the abovementioned channels, as well as the calculation of the amount of the claim can and should be considered groundless.

Moreover, according to the defense opinion, filing a lawsuit by the company UCF Partners Limited against LLC "Edil-Import" is a good example of abuse of right.

However, from third parties involved in the case, was a company that participated in the creation of audiovisual works intended for placement in broadcast schedule of Federal TV channels. Herewith the founder of this company is in a conjugal relationship with the representative UCF Partners Limited (plaintiff) on the territory of the Russian Federation.

The defendant is convinced that filing a lawsuit on protection of the rights of the controversial commercial videos, the plaintiff trying to obtain compensation for the alleged infringement of commercial videos, for which placement in accordance with agreement with the defendant were responsible one of the third parties (whose founder was the wife of the representative of the defendant in territory of the Russian Federation).

The Arbitration court, having estimated all the parties’ arguments and evidence, dismissed a lawsuit of the company UCF Partners Limited, to satisfy its claim on collecting of compensation in the amount of 461.640.000 (four hundred and sixty-one million six hundred forty thousand) rubles for violation of rights on audiovisual works. Thus, the lawyers of the company "Zuykov & partners" LLC successfully defended the interests of its client.