The bill will determine the responsibility of marketplaces for violation of IP rights

The Ministry of Economic Development proposes to define conditions when operators of digital platforms will not be responsible for the fact that sellers violate intellectual property and trademark rights when placing goods on these sites. Such a clause is included in one of the latest versions of the draft law "On the Platform Economy", which is being developed by the Ministry.

In particular, the operator will not be liable for intellectual property infringement if at least one of the conditions of Part 3 of Article 1253.1 of the Civil Code on the specifics of the responsibility of an information intermediary is fulfilled. First, the operator did not know and should not have known about the misuse of intellectual property. Secondly, he did find out, but in this case, he took "necessary and sufficient measures to stop the violation of intellectual property rights." The article of the Civil Code also clarifies that the list of such measures and the procedure for their implementation may be established by a separate law.

Current regulations are sometimes interpreted not in favor of marketplaces, lawyers say.

With the adoption of the amendments, the responsibility of the site operator is not completely removed, says Sergey Zuykov, patent attorney, managing partner of Zuykov and partners. If the intermediary in the face of the marketplace is aware of the violation, but he does not take measures to stop it, then the blame already falls on him, the expert emphasizes. According to Zuykov, it is "categorically wrong" to exempt a conditional marketplace from any liability – the operator must control the site and application entrusted to him, administer them without causing losses to others.

Source: Vedomosti