Russian Newspapers Given American Bill
// AiF and Komsomolskaya pravda owe U.S. lawyer $682,000
The New York State Supreme Court has frozen the American bank accounts of the Russian newspapers Argumenty i fakty and Komsomolskaya pravda, acting on a suit filed by lawyer Julian Lowenfeld, who is demanding $682,000 from the newspapers for his services. According to Lowenfeld, the papers owed him $434,000 for legal services in 1998, which, with 6-percent annual interest, amounts to the sum of his claim. Lowenfeld told the court that he was not paid for his participation in the Russian newspapers' legal dispute with the Russian-language U.S. periodical Kuryer. The trial started in December 1997, when the Russian newspapers accused Kuryer of copyright violations and unauthorized reprinting of their material. They demanded over $500,000 damages from Kuryer. The court ruled in favor of the Russian newspapers. Lowenfeld is best known in the United States for his defense of Russian intellectual property. He has defended the rights of Mosfilm, Lenfilm and Soyuzmultfilm against video piracy.
Lowenfeld told Kommersant that the newspapers have set up offshore companies to avoid paying in the Kuryer case and ask their advertisers to transfer money to Media Express Ltd. Company. Therefore, NY State Supreme Court Judge Karen Smith ordered the “accounts and trademarks” of the papers to be temporarily frozen, as well as the accounts of Media Express Ltd., Effect Publishing (which represents AiF in the U.S.) and Lorafco, which publishes Komsomolsky pravda in the U.S. Those companies have one month to appeal the decision or apply to make an out-of-court agreement. Otherwise, the right to the papers' trademarks and the income from their publication in the U.S. will be transferred to Lowenfeld.
A source who took part in the case against Kuryer told Kommersant that Lowenfeld was to receive 10 percent of the sum awarded in the case but “the Kuryer lawyers quickly hid the money in their accounts and there was nothing to claim from them.” The lawyer, however, demanded his percentage of the sum that the newspapers did not receive. First deputy general director of Argumenty i Fakty Publishing House Pavel Burov told Kommersant that the company has no accounts or trademarks in the U.S. Alexander Ivanov, Komsomolsky pravda director for legal issues, also said that the paper's trademark is not registered in the U.S.
Alexander Voronov; Dmitry Sidorov, New York
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 11, 2006
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Photo: Alexander Miridonov
