Sber sued 1.8 billion rubles from Merlion due to VMware

2024: Sberbank sued 1.8 billion rubles from Merlion

On January 29, 2024, the City Arbitration Court Moscow satisfied the claim Sberbank against the domestic IT distributor (Merlion Merlion LLC). The latter, according to the decision, is obliged to pay approximately 1.8 billion in favor of the plaintiffs. rubles

The process in question was initiated in August 2023 in connection with the contract for the use of the VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer software product under a simple (non-exclusive) license. Sberbank paid the distributor Merlion to provide access to this software, but due to the current geopolitical situation, it was deprived of the opportunity to exercise the user's powers. After that, the bank demanded the return of the transferred funds.

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Фото: Unsplash

The court documents say that the American developer of virtualization products VMware and the Irish structure VMware International Unlimited Company were involved as third parties in the proceedings. In accordance with the decision made, the defendant's arguments about the refusal of the copyright holder to carry out activities on the territory of Russia cannot serve as an exemption from obligations and liability under the agreement with Sberbank. Under the terms of this agreement, it was the defendant who assumed the obligation to maintain the plaintiff's access to the information resources necessary to reproduce the licensed computer program.

On this basis, the court decided to recover from Merlion LLC in favor of Sberbank about 17.73 million rubles in penalties, the amount of unjust enrichment in the amount of 1.77 billion rubles, interest on the amount of enrichment, based on the key rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, as well as 175.97 thousand rubles as compensation for state duty costs. In this case, the sublicense agreement between the parties is terminated.^[1]

2023: Sberbank lawsuit against Merlion

In August 2023 Sberbank , he sued Merlion for undelivered software. The amount of claims is 2.02 billion, rubles according to the portal of Arbitration Courts. Moscow

As specified by CNews in Sberbank, the complaint concerns the collection of an unworked advance. The reason for the lawsuit was that the bank in early 2022 paid Merlion for access to software, but in March 2022 lost the opportunity to download and use it. At the same time, it is not specified what specific decision is in question. At the same time, the IT distributor claims that the company has fulfilled all contractual obligations.

Sberbank sued Merlion for undelivered software

Merlion's position is that our commitment to the bank was limited to providing an appropriate hyperlink on which it was possible to download software. The bank took advantage of the link, managed to download the software and, according to our information, uses it, - the company told the publication.

They also noted that Sberbank accepted the terms of the license agreement of a foreign company, independently becoming a party to the license agreement.

We believe that we cannot be responsible for a foreign vendor who decided not to work in Russia anymore, "concluded a Merlion representative.

CNews notes that the refusals of foreign developers to provide paid Russian software companies became a standard situation after the start of a special operation Russia To Ukraine in February 2022. At that time, many foreign vendors began to leave the domestic market and stop providing technical support to Russian customers or selling their software. Thus, Russian companies flooded the American corporation Oracle with claims of almost 300 million rubles. Among those who applied - "," Marvell of distribution"," "," etc CROCMegaphone.^[2]

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