For the first time in Russia court shuts down private business for violating copyright laws

Being a rare case in the law-enforcement practice of the Russian Federation, court examination of the case against an individual entrepreneur accused of violating copyright laws came to an end not only with the conviction, but also with the termination of the private business.

The precedent case was found by the regional court of Krasnodar satisfying the claim of Microsoft, Corel, Adobe, Autodesk, and 1C rightholders on the infringement of their copyrights by private entrepreneur Andrei Chebotarev. According to the termination charges, the defendant was engaged in selling a large number of counterfeit software of the indicated rightholders.

Since the year 2008 Russia's Civil Code is supplemented by the Article 1253 providing for the liquidation of any business engaged in repeated or gross violation of copyright laws, however in practice this clause of the Civil Code is being put into action, perhaps, for the second time at most.

It is known that last year in summer Andrei Chebotarev was sentenced to 3 years and 2 months of conditional imprisonment (probation period for 4 months more) and a fine of 350 thousand rubles imposed by the verdict of Tahtamukayski regional court of the republic of Adygea. He was charged with illegal distribution of counterfeit software and pornography disks causing a combined damage of over 7.7 million rubles. The subsequent charge occurred In November 2012, when the prosecutor of Kuban administrative district of Krasnodar filed an additional claim on terminating the activity of PE Andrei Chebotarev.