Mamichev Anton

Mamichev Anton

Biography

2019: Award of 23 million rubles for copyright infringement by Veeam

In mid-June 2019, the Primorsky District Court of St. Petersburg issued a verdict on the lawsuit from the ex-programmer Veeam Software. He accused the company, as well as Intervim LLC (part of Veeam) of copyright infringement.

In addition, Amazon was listed among the defendants in the lawsuit. The plaintiff considered it a hosting provider and demanded that the company delete copies of the program. During the meeting on October 10, 2018, he abandoned all claims against Amazon.

Anton Mamichev has worked at Intervim since 2012, according to his Facebook page. He claims to be the creator of the eLearning Metadata Manager program, which focuses on content developers for e-courses. Upon dismissal of his own free will in October 2016, the programmer offered to transfer the program to the employer on the terms of a simple non-exclusive license with the preservation of copyright. The proposal was accepted. But in June 2017, as follows from the lawsuit, all elements of the copyright mark disappeared from the program code, namely: (C) 2012-2017 Anton Mamichev.

In May 2017, the parties still tried to resolve the dispute before the trial, RIA Novosti reports. At this time, Mamichev told Intervim that the source code of the program contains a copyright protection sign. At the same time, the company said that Mamichev wrote the program as part of his official duties.

Mamichev requested compensation in the amount of 43.8 million rubles for deleting copyright information and violating exclusive rights. The court reduced the amount of payment to 23 million rubles.

With Intervim, 1.6 million rubles were collected for deleting information about authorship, with Veeam Software - 1.6 million rubles for using a program with a remote copyright mark. Both companies were also ordered to pay 2.6 million rubles for playing the program, and Veeam Software - another 17.6 million rubles for providing access to a copy of the program on the server.^[1] 

The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation recognized for IT developers the right to copyright protection in a collective product

In June 2022 , the Constitutional Court (CC) of Russia recognized for IT developers the right to protect authorship in a collective product. The decision was made based on the situation of the Rostov programmer Anton Mamichev, who defended the copyright for the eLearning Metadata Manager program he created.

It is unacceptable to refuse to protect the rights of the author of the program only on the basis that it is a compound work and the rights of other copyright holders of the objects used to create it are not respected, especially if they have no legal claims against the developer of the program, the court's press service said in a statement.

The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation recognized for IT developers the right to protect authorship in a collective product

In his lawsuit, Anton Mamichev claimed that his former employer Intervim LLC and the Swiss company controlling him, Veeam Software Group GmbH, misappropriated the educational content management system he developed. The Primorsky District Court of St. Petersburg partially satisfied these requirements, but the St. Petersburg City Court overturned this decision. The appeal referred to the fact that the controversial program consists of library files that are part of the web application and are used to perform its most important functions.

Then the IT specialist appealed to the Constitutional Court. He ruled that the author should not be denied protection of his rights on the basis that the program is a compound work and the rights of other copyright holders of the objects used to create it are not respected, especially if the latter have no legal claims against the developer.

Contrary to the constitutional requirements of justice and proportionality, justice in such cases is to the detriment of the author of the programme. In fact, copyright protection only upon obtaining the consent of the creators of the objects used in the development of the program makes the implementation of the author's right to judicial protection dependent on the will of third parties, the Constitutional Court said.[2] product

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