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Newspaper Wins Case against Website
The Ninth Arbitration Appeals Court of Moscow ruled yesterday in favor of ZAO Business News Media, publisher of Vedomosti newspaper, in its suit against the RosBusinessConsulting information agency, overturning lower court rulings. The court established that RBC violated the newspaper's copyright by reprinting over one hundred of its articles on the RBC website without indicating their source. The court awarded Vedomosti 257,000 rubles. The plaintiff had demanded 257 million rubles in damages.
The Moscow Arbitration Court ruled in October that the Vedomosti articles are not intellectual property but informational messages. It also found procedural irregularities in the newspaper's case. The latest court decision is also subject to appeal.
Business News Media is owned by the Pearson Publishing Group (publisher of The Financial Times), Dow Jones (publisher of the Wall Street Journal) and Independent Media (which is owned by the Sanoma WSOY media holding company). The daily Vedomosti had a readership of 140,300 as of July of this year, according to TNS Gallup Media. The RBC group of companies includes the RosBusinessConsulting information agency, RBK Daily newspaper, RBK-TV channel, the RBK-Soft Co., ytro.ru and CNEWS electronic media and other properties.
The case began in December 2005 with a suit filed by Vedomosti shareholders over reprints of reprints of the newspaper's articles on the RBC website quote.ru. RBC filed countercharges in January and August of this year. “We have achieved the main thing,” Vedomosti PR director Elena Bystrova told Kommersant yesterday. “We showed that our authors' articles are intellectual property and thereby set a precedent.”
www.commersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 21, 2006
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