Alexander Afonin

Problem
The legal information posted on the website, including the user agreement, the personal data processing policy, and the rules for the exchange of goods, needed to be adjusted in accordance with the changes made to the current legislation

Project work
Our team of IT lawyers analyzed the documents posted on the website, current legislation, and specific risks faced by the client in its current activities. Documents were finalized and updated, taking into account amendments to the legislation on consumer rights protection and personal data protection

The result and benefits for the client
The client is now able to carry out activities without risks from regulatory authorities in terms of documents regulating work with personal data and consumer rights protection, and the client's specific risks were minimized

Problem
The problem with which the client appealed: the leading federal media of Russia (NTV Television Company JSC) illegally use fragments of the copyright holder's videos without agreement, including them in news stories. The videos are dedicated to insects, namely, ticks; the popularity and demand for the videos is due to the fact that other bloggers and studios do not conduct high-quality shooting of ticks

Project work
Comprehensive management of cases with violators:

• Ensuring the collection of evidence, sending a pre-trial claim
• Preparation and submission of a statement of claim
• Participation in all court sessions of all instances
• Preparation of objections, responses to appeals and cassation complaints of violators
• Ensuring the actual execution of the court decision

We helped a blogger to recover compensation in the amount of RUB 1,320,000 from NTV television company in the Moscow Arbitration Court for violation of copyright and exclusive rights to videos by broadcasting and posting on the website. Of particular difficulty was proving the content of the TV program on the air, since the defendant deleted the recordings in order to avoid liability. We have done a lot of work to collect evidence and we have managed to build a system of circumstantial evidence that allows us to confirm the position of our client

The result and benefits for the client
In case A40-112902/2019, we managed to prove the fact of posting the video on the air on the basis of indirect evidence: posting a copy of the infringing video on the website, a certificate of the text content of the program on the air from Smimonitor LLC. In this case, the courts formed an important position, which had not been expressed by the courts before, according to which the media bear the burden of proving a different content of the broadcast than stated by the plaintiff

Problem
The lawyers were tasked with conducting a legal due diligence of the client's intellectual property and developing a system for its protection, giving recommendations on optimizing business processes in terms of timely and correct registration of rights to newly created intellectual property objects, minimizing risks associated with intellectual property, as well as measures to protect the company's intellectual property rights

Project work
An audit of the existing intellectual property and the correctness of its registration was carried out, and the client's needs in terms of protection of newly created objects were identified. As a result, the client received comprehensive recommendations on building the company's business processes in such a way as to ensure a sufficient level of intellectual property protection—both existing and that which will still be created—as well as on the execution of the necessary documents for this. A legal opinion was provided with recommendations on the protection of trademarks, computer programs, as well as the registration of employee's RIAs

The result and benefits for the client
At the moment, the client is able to formalize RIAs with the help of in-house lawyers, and the gaps in the registration of rights to intangible assets have also been filled

A blogger, owner of an online store of bloptop soft toys (over 400 thousand toys sold), and the author of the famous toy based on the Internet meme "Floppa - a big Russian cat" with an image of a cat from the popular meme "big floppa" applied for protection of his rights to the toy design. The complexity of the dispute is due to the fact that the obvious bad faith of the violator (in the form of replacing the photo), in the opinion of ordinary people, allowed him to defend himself from the claim ("Are you protecting the meme?" - "You are not the author", "Are you protecting the photo?" - "But the photo is different", "Are you protecting the form?" - "It is used by many manufacturers"). We managed to convince the court that the production of a very similar work with the same positioning, when consumers confuse the original and the copy, when the copy could not have been created without the original, could be considered reworking

The client is one of the four inventors of the UltrixQuadri vaccine, the first Russian inactivated quadrivalent influenza vaccine that meets all WHO recommendations on the composition and amount of hemagglutinin of each strain of the influenza virus. Full dispute management on a turnkey basis, from drawing up a claim and a statement of claim to participation in court hearings and the execution of the court decision in the court of three instances (first, appeal, cassation). The author's remuneration for the development and each year of use of the invention was collected