Court upholds the decision in a copyright case involving camera module design

On September 10, the Moscow City Court considered and dismissed the appeals of TEKHKUB LLC and ES EL GRUPP LLC filed against the decision of the Cheryomushkinsky District Court of Moscow, accepted on the claim of Kirill Aleksandrovich Knyazev to recover compensation from TEKHKUB LLC and ES EL GRUPP LLC for the illegal use of a copyrighted object - the design of the housing for the video module of the Intel Realsense D415 camera (case No. 33-41009/2024), by which the plaintiff's claims were partially satisfied, and the defendants were jointly and severally ordered to pay compensation in the amount of 32,461,242 rubles 84 kopecks.

The interests of the plaintiff Knyazev K.A. were represented by the company Zuykov and partners.

The basis for partial satisfaction of the claims of Knyazev K.A. was the fact that the plaintiff presented evidence of the supply by the company "TEKHKUB" to the company "KHESON RUS" of USB cameras SLM-415-ATM in the amount of 30,201 pieces, in which the design of the video module case created by Knyazev K.A. was used, as well as evidence of the placement on the website on the Internet safe-logic.ru, the administrator of which is the company "ES EL GROUP", of advertisements, offers for sale and sales of these products. At the same time, Knyazev K.A. did not give his consent to the use of the design by the defendants, no agreements on the granting of the right to use the work were concluded between the plaintiff and the defendants. We wrote in more detail about the decision of the court of first instance here.

The defendants did not agree with the decision of the court of first instance and filed appeals with the Moscow City Court, in which they asked to cancel the court's decision and to deny the demands of Knyazev K.A., pointing out that the court of first instance did not take into account their arguments that the disputed design was used with the consent of the copyright holder, there were no grounds for holding them jointly and severally liable, and the amount of compensation was excessive and not supported by the case materials. Also, according to the appellants, the court of first instance did not evaluate the defendants' arguments about the presence of signs of abuse of rights in the plaintiff's actions.

The Moscow City Court, having considered the arguments of the appeals and leaving the decision of the court of first instance unchanged, recognized as lawful and justified the conclusions of the court of first instance that the case materials confirm the fact that Knyazev K.A. owns the exclusive right to the design of the video module housing , as well as the fact that the defendants used the disputed design, despite the fact that the defendants did not present evidence in the case materials, including with the appeal, indicating the consent of the copyright holder - the plaintiff to use the disputed design by concluding the relevant agreements.

The argument of the appeal of the company "Tekhkub" that it legally used the disputed design, since until September 2020 it was the owner of the patent for an industrial design, which protected an identical solution for the appearance of the product, was rejected by the Moscow City Court, since by the decision of the Court for Intellectual Property Rights in case No. SIP-229/2020 the said patent for an industrial design was declared invalid in part due to the incorrect indication of the patent holder, and Knyazev K.A. was recognized as the proper patent holder from the moment of its creation.

Tekhkub had a right of prior use, pointing out that the provisions on the right of prior use do not apply to the copyright objects that the plaintiff had applied to protect. At the same time, the named defendant, in order to apply the provisions on the right of prior use, did not provide evidence that it had made the necessary preparations to use the design identical to the one protected by the patent for the industrial design, nor did it provide evidence that the disputed design of the video module housing was created by anyone other than Knyazev K.A.

Rejecting the arguments of the company "ES EL GRUPP" regarding the lack of evidence of its placement of the disputed design on its resources on the Internet, the Moscow City Court indicated that since the said company was the administrator of the site, it is responsible for its information content, since the use of the site's resources without its control is impossible.

The defendants' objections regarding the inadmissibility of the expert opinion, which established the fact of the use of the work in the disputed products, were rejected by the appellate court, since the defendants did not provide evidence of the unreliability of the expert's conclusions, or their inconsistency with the evidence presented, and the expert's conclusions were not refuted by documents, thereby the expert's conclusion was rightfully accepted by the court of first instance as admissible evidence.

The Moscow City Court found the arguments of the appellants regarding the excessiveness of the compensation awarded by the court of first instance to be untenable, based on the volumes and duration of use of the design work established by the court of first instance, taking into account the principles of reasonableness and fairness, as well as the proportionality of the compensation to the consequences of the violation.

At the same time, the appellate court agreed with the conclusions of the Cheryomushkinsky District Court on the need to hold the defendants jointly and severally liable for the violation committed, taking into account the provisions of paragraph 6.1 of Article 1252 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, as well as the explanations of the highest judicial authority given in paragraph 71 of the Resolution of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated 23.04.2019 No. 10.

The arguments of the appeals regarding the plaintiff’s abuse of rights were rejected by the panel of judges due to their lack of support from the case materials.

Thus, the decision of the Cheryomushkinsky District Court dated April 10, 2024 on the recovery of compensation was left unchanged , and the appeals were dismissed.