RBC prosecuted for plagiarizing from Vedomosti

An arbitration court has upheld an appeal by the newspaper Vedomosti against the ruling by a lower court which refused to institute proceedings against RBC for reprinting a number of Vedomosti materials on its Quote.ru website without attributing authorship. However, the court has significantly reduced the punitive damages to be paid to Vedomosti for copyright infringement: instead of the $10.5 million originally sought Vedomosti will receive only $10,500. Vedomosti PR manager has said that the amount of punitive damages is not the main thing. The enforcement of intellectual property rights in Russia is what really matters. The arbitration court rejected a similar counterclaim by RBC, in which the information agency accused the newspaper of plagiarism.