Nabix LLC brought a legal action against Bumagi LLC for protection of its exclusive right to a software program. The trial court dismissed the claim. The claimant dissatisfied with the decision went to the court of appeals, which appointed a repeated expert examination. Maxim Volkov, attorney at law, and his team of lawyers discovered and showed that the defendant concealed the authentic source code of the program, as a result of which the repeated expert examination was conducted. The court of appeals accepted the lawyers’ arguments, overruled the trial court’s decision and ruled to satisfy the claim.
Maxim Volkov, attorney at PATENTUS, who represented Nabix, is confident that the “legal approach taken in this matter can be followed in similar disputes, i.e. where the defendant has made non-functional changes, the court may be requested to examine such changes.
In matters where an expert opinion is the key evidence, the probability of getting such decision overruled in a court of appeals is usually estimated as very low. The arbitrazh (commercial) court of appeals accepted our arguments, summoned the expert for interrogation and during it the expert failed to explain convincingly why he had overseen two identical portions of the code with comments (the portions were demonstrated as an example during the hearing) when he conducted the examination. As a result, the decision was overruled and the claim satisfied. The court not only banned any use of the derivative work, but it also affirmed the claimant’s rights to the defendant’s program.”
Taking into account this situation, it is obvious that compliance with author’s rights and ethical rules in development of software is a prerequisite for ensuring innovative and stable development of the IT sector in general.
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