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Mosfilm, Lenfilm Upheld in the U.S.
Russia’s biggest film studios, Mosfilm and Lenfilm, have won the piracy trial of no precedent in the United States. St. Petersburg Book House of the U.S., which was replicating DVDs and videotapes with Russia’s hits, has violated copyright of Mosfilm and Lenfilm, the Federal Court of New York Eastern District finally acknowledged. The next thing for the court is to determine the remedy amount that may exceed $19 million.
The trial started far back in the spring of 2002, when Mosfilm, Krupny Plan Co. (which produces DVDs and videotapes for the film consortium) and Mosfilm’s agent in the United States, Close-Up International, went to law against owners of St. Petersburg Book House Joseph Berov and Natalia Orlova, blaming the copyright violation on them. The suit was sustained by Lenfilm, which, however, is no independent party under the trial.
St. Petersburg Book House is a big company in New York selling DVDs and videotapes with Russia’s films in a store located in Brighton Beach, said Sergey Semenov, general director at FTM Entertainment that stands for the claimants.
“Before the trial, all our films sold in the United States were 100-percent pirate,” Semenov specified, “the people thought Russia far away and they could do whatever they wanted. Once the judicial examination began, many dealers made contracts with Russian studios, but St. Petersburg Book House proceeded selling counterfeit.”
In the end, the court found out the Americans illegally distributed 383 films of Russia and banned the sale of roughly 1,400 films more from the catalogue of Close-Up International . Most of them were made at Mosfilm.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of June 06, 2006
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