The artist accused the marketplace of selling goods with his logo, indicating that he has the exclusive right to this trademark. Safronov’s defense demands that Wildberries remove all products with his drawings and pay compensation for the damage caused.
Among the goods presented on the Internet site are the picture on the tree “Nikas”, a cross-stitch kit and T-shirt bags with the artist’s logos. Their photos were attached to the statement of claim, which was filed with the Moscow Arbitration Court.
Gleb Sakhrai, managing partner of the PRT agency, believes that this is nothing more than PR:
“It is difficult to understand the intricacies of the spiritual and mental organization of a person like Nikas Safronov. On the one hand, there may indeed be such a public attack with an attempt to receive compensation, of course, not 10 billion, not a billion, but at least something. I think this is a story about getting into a fight and getting something: at least PR, at most something else.
According to the article of the Civil Code, for violation of the exclusive right, the author must be compensated for material damage. There are three types of penalty setting – and two of them are very vague in the case of works of art. But the court itself can consider the case, says Ksenia Kasyanova, director of research and development at the KROS communications agency:
“The practice of protecting intellectual property and rights to your own brand, to your own name, of course, is widespread. In Russia, more or less, it still continues to amaze. The attention of some copyright holders to the purity of the use of their brand. In the case of Wildberries and Nikas Safronov, on the whole, the claim itself is justified, while we are well aware that such a system business as Wildberries, of course, is much more interesting from the point of view of the claim for the plaintiff than each individual manufacturer, which in one way or another uses the intellectual property of Mr. Safronov. In this case, the volume of the claim is always the author’s appetites, so here to talk about how such an amount is justified, well, justified by the presentation of an assessment of one’s own works, this is how it is measured. With a high degree of probability, if not in 100% volume, then in a sufficiently large amount, the claim can be satisfied.”
The application and attached documents were registered on 7 April. Entrepreneurs who sold things on the marketplace do not appear in the statement of claim. Only Wildberries is listed as a defendant.