If You Dispute, You Pay the Costs. How Violators Lose Twice
As is well known, the law provides for liability for the infringement of exclusive trademark rights in the form of compensation, which the rights holder is entitled to recover from the infringer.
After sending a claim demanding payment of compensation, events usually develop according to one of two scenarios:
- Constructive — The infringer acknowledges the violation and voluntarily pays compensation, settling the matter out of court. Rights holders are usually willing to reduce the compensation in such cases.
- Litigation — If an agreement cannot be reached, the rights holder is forced to go to court. This leads to additional expenses: legal fees, test purchases, gathering evidence, postage, and other costs. At this point, the rights holder no longer reduces the compensation on principle—and also recovers the expenses in addition (and these expenses often exceed 100,000 rubles).
Some pirates apparently expect that bureaucratic complexities and the length of the process will force the rights holder to "leave the infringer alone."
Courts Fully Awarded Costs
In practice, dragging things out only increases their costs—because in addition to the basic compensation amount, rights holders also recover their expenses. Recently, we managed to obtain court decisions in which all expenses incurred by the rights holder, including legal fees, were awarded in full (100%).
Incidentally, there are decisions where courts, while reducing the compensation, do not reduce the expenses proportionally—since they have already exercised their discretion to reduce the compensation, and the fact of the violation and other grounds for the infringer's liability have been proven.
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