All news

Medvedev proposes to update international intellectual property rights conventions

Prime Minister recalled that Russia should approve a new reading of the Civil Code soon

MOSCOW, October 22 (Itar-Tass) — Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev proposed to update the international conventions over intellectual property rights with due account of modern realities.

“We should face the truth and acknowledge that in several spheres previous classical, canonical approaches to the protection of copyright and intellectual property are already not efficient. This is a world problem,” Medvedev told the participants in the forum Anti-Counterfeiting-2012 on Monday.

“Therefore, new international conventions should be drafted that will take into account the speed and easiness of the access to the content, and at the same time fix it (the copyright – Itar-Tass) and seek to protect the copyright, including in the Internet,” he added.

Medvedev recalled that Russia should approve a new reading of the Civil Code soon. However, this step will not solve fully the copyright protection problem, he noted. “It is obvious that the conflict exists between the environment, which today promotes the spread of new technologies and the information transmission, and current conventions,” the prime minister said.

Medvedev noted the need for the monitoring over the copyright violations, but it is very difficult to combat such processes in the Internet. “In several cases, and I already stated about this, probably this should not be done. It is needed to create another system of regulation, which divide in a slightly another way the balance of the protection of the interests of the right holder, author and user in order not just to provoke the illegal use of products,” he said.

The prime minister also urged to improve the legal practice of the copyright protection. He stated that several years ago the Russian judicial system did not consider such violations as serious. Almost no criminal cases were opened for the copyright violations, and if these criminal cases were opened, they were not finalized. “It is important that our legal practice and the activities of the legal structures will seek to protect the copyright as tough as possible,” Medvedev underlined.