Copyright Protection Under New Law Russia
As part of Russia's bid to join the WTO, the government clamped down on IP offenders by tightening up its IP laws. New IP legislation which was passed in December 2006 will come into force on January 1, 2008 with the following changes:
1. Violators of copyright and trade mark protection can face negative consequences and the
right holder can seek compensation through an injunction against the offender for distribution of advertisements, damages or destruction of advertising materials.
2. When the advertising is created by an advertising agency, it is necessary to stipulate in the copyright agreement that the agency is liable to its client for any potential third-party copyright infringements that might occur owing to distribution of the promotional materials it creates.
3. The right to re-draft a work is often missing from an agreement on transfer of rights. Any unsanctioned amendments introduced into the works used in creating the advertising materials will be deemed as infringement upon the copyright under the new law.
4. Sometimes advertising infringes through failure to indicate the name of the author when the work is used. In the new Law, a provision has been made that if the client or producer of advertising wishes to retain the right not to indicate the author's name, this must be expressly stipulated in the copyright agreement, otherwise the author may seek damages in court if the work affects its reputation.
5. Before launching an advertisement, the Rospatent database must be searched for designations similar to those used in the advertisement and registered as third-party trade marks, slogans or logos. If this is the case, the advertisement must be modified or an agreement reached with the proprietor of the trade mark to use the trade mark under a licence agreement. In the absence of such consent, it would constitute a violation of the trade mark, slogans or logos of the
right holder.
6. Apart from keeping track of the risks of violation of third-party rights, advertisers can protect their rights by timely identification and registration of rights to copyrighted matter created in the course of advertisement production. If the advertising client fails to arrange, in a timely manner, copyright to the works so created, it might subsequently face competitor companies contracting to obtain those copyrights and registering trade marks in their own names.
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