Krasnodar, 13 April – Yug Times. Over the past five years, the number of judicial disputes about the illegitimate use of photographs earlier placed on the Internet has soared in Russia. According to RTM Group consulting company, the number of such cases grew by 30%, compared with the period from 2013 until 2018. Especially frequent such disputes were during the last twelve months. However, sometimes litigation is initiated as the foundation for a profitable business rather than to protect the copyright.
Usually, such claims are filed by legal entities founded with the only aim – to earn money on such lawsuits. They assert that the photographer has transferred all his copyrights to them. Their main targets are regional media, but sometimes federal newspapers and magazines may also get court notices. The entrepreneurial lawyers use the following algorithm: first they find published photos, and then their authors with whom they sign a contract.
“In the past, one would deal with lawsuits filed directly by photographers, but now there are companies that do it on the photographers’ behalf. Copyright protection for photographs has turned into profitable business. Companies sign trust management agreements with photographs, and then they file mass lawsuits,” explains Yevgeni Tsarev, RTM Group Consulting Company Manager.
It is worth noting that the photographers themselves do not have complaints to the photos used in news articles on the Internet. The lawsuits are coming from legal entities several years after the publication appeared. Limitation of action does not work here, because the period begins from the moment when the author or the copyright owner noticed the offence.
As a rule, legal companies making their living by suing mass media, send a pre-action letter to the media, in which they notify them of the recorded offence and of their intention to go to court. They suggest that the conflict of interests be resolved pre-judicially, because the litigation may linger, and the plaintiffs may not win at all. In their pre-action letter, the copyright owners demand that the image be removed and suggest that a penalty that significantly exceeds the real cost of the photograph (starting from 20,000 roubles) be paid voluntarily. The plaintiffs also state that in case of refusal from pre-action settlement, they will sue the defendant for a bigger sum.
Quite often, the media agree to pay this money voluntarily, because, according to the Russian Code of Civil Procedure, the compensation may increase several-fold at court. Yevgeni Tsarev says that the average suit for illegal use of a photograph in Russia varies between 20,000 and 200,000 roubles. The share of the cases won by the defendant is about 13%. In such cases, the copyright owners’ failure is caused by either lack of evidence of the copyright, or the fact of its violation. Quite often, the cause for lawsuits may be photographs not representing any cultural value: sewage manholes, a pile of banknotes, or a block of flats. Sometimes, even governmental institutions may become a victim of the lawyers engaged in the copyright business. Say, the Ministry of Construction and Housing and Utilities Sphere had to pay 20,000 roubles for the photograph that really featured a sewage manhole. Over many years of free use of generally accessible photographs, their multiplication may have reached such heights that now every user may become a multiple offender, and the copyright will be a subject of illicit gain rather than intellectual value.
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