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Moscow court orders two news outlets to pay damages for violating TASS copyright

The agencies are to pay out a total of $9,600 to TASS
TASS news agency headquarters Valery Sharifulin/TASS
TASS news agency headquarters
© Valery Sharifulin/TASS

MOSCOW, September 27. /TASS/. Moscow’s Lefortovsky District Court has ordered two news agencies to pay out a total of 622,000 rubles ($9,600) for violating the copyright of images belonging to TASS. The Moscow City Court’s Chamber for Civil Cases upheld the decision, rejecting an appeal filed by one of the defendants.

The Court held that the Flash Siberia news agency had been posting TASS images for a long time on its website without permission. However, thanks to TASS ceaseless efforts to combat copyright infringements, some of the images were removed from the website at the pre-trial stage. Nevertheless, the news outlet continued to use 38 photos illegitimately. The Court upheld the arguments presented by TASS and ordered Flash Siberia to pay 380,000 rubles ($5,900) for violating the TASS copyright and another 21,000 rubles ($328) in legal fees.

The second defendant, the Flash Nord news agency, illegally published 20 images owned by TASS on its website. The Court ordered the news outlet to shell out 200,000 rubles ($3,100) in compensation and 21,000 rubles in legal fees. In addition, the Court ordered both defendants to remove the illegitimately used images from their websites.