Supreme Court of the Russian Federation

The Supreme Court (Supreme Court) is the highest judicial body in civil, criminal, administrative and other cases, judicial courts of general jurisdiction, carries out judicial supervision of their activities in the forms provided for by federal law and clarifies issues of judicial practice.

History

2025: Appointment as head of Igor Krasnov

In September 2025, the constitutional committee of the Federation Council supported the candidacy of the current Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov for the post of chairman of the Supreme Court. Krasnov said that the legal community is discussing the issue of "deep specialization" of judges in considering specific cases and a number of other issues related to pre-trial settlement. He spoke about proposals to create a personal account in the information system in the Supreme Court, where a person can file an appeal, receive summons, submit petitions. Read more here

2024

Establishing an information security department to prevent cyber attacks

The Judicial Department under the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation will form an information security department to prevent hacker attacks and other digital incidents. This was announced in mid-November 2024 by the Director General of the department Vladislav Ivanov.

The initiative, as noted by the Russian Agency for Legal and Judicial Information (RAPSI), is being implemented as a response to a large-scale failure in the State Automated System Justice system, which lasted about a month. Due to the hacker attack, the websites of federal courts, justices of the peace, as well as the judicial department itself under the Supreme Court and its departments in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, ceased to work. The inoperability of services turned into significant difficulties for ships and all participants in the process. Responsibility for the attack claimed the pro-Ukrainian hacker group BO Team

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Фото: Supreme Court of the Russian Federation

Based on the results of the incident with the malfunction of judicial sites, we are creating an information security department, "Ivanov said, adding that regional departments could expand their staff to solve such problems.

According to him, in order to improve cyber protection, the judicial department intends to optimize the concept of information security and organize special courses on the basis of the Russian Academy of Justice. The judicial system proposes to develop extremely clear algorithms for actions in hacker attacks. In addition, as Ivanov emphasized, close attention should be paid to monitoring the information security perimeter.

It is said that informatization of the judicial system in Russia is an important task. The introduction of digital technologies will help speed up legal proceedings, reduce the burden on judges and employees of the court apparatus, reduce the cost of legal proceedings and increase the level of openness of the judicial system.^[1]

Elected a new chairman of the Supreme Court of Russia

On April 1, 2024, the Higher Qualification Collegium of Judges (VKKS) approved Irina Podnosova as head of the Supreme Court. The decision was made unanimously. Read more here.

2019: Preparation of large-scale clarifications for intellectual property courts

On April 11, 2019, a draft Resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court RUSSIAN FEDERATION "On the Application of Part Four" was published. Civil Code of the Russian Federation This document contains clarifications for intellectual property courts and is intended to replace a similar Ruling No. 5/29, which the courts refer to in thousands of different cases, TAdviser the company Maxima Legal that prepared the review of the project said.

In addition, the presented Resolution replaces a number of other clarifications, and is also an attempt to summarize the most significant positions developed by the courts over the past 10 years. Thus, according to Maxim Ali, head of IP/IT Maxima Legal practice, who studied the document, an ambitious task is set to create a key and largest document with explanations on intellectual property.

As a result, the draft Resolution already occupies 94 pages of text and contains 185 items. For comparison, Resolution No. 5/29 contains only 65 points.

Given the fact that many still existing explanations will lose their force, the developed document contains many positions that clearly follow from the law or are already known to judicial practice.

In particular, according to Maxim Ali, the following positions from the Decree are not fundamentally new:

• in order to recognize audio recording or video recording as acceptable evidence, it is not required to obtain consent to conduct it;
• remuneration under the license agreement cannot be returned only on the basis of the licensee's non-use of the intellectual property granted to him;
• it is not a violation of the use of words registered as a trademark in their common (common) sense, and not for the identification of goods.

At the same time, the Regulation contains a number of clarifications that are either new or have so far been infrequently applied by courts in practice:

• when making an intellectual right as a contribution to the authorized capital of an economic company, the conclusion of a separate agreement with such company is not required if there is an indication of a corporate decision, and if it contains all the essential conditions of the agreement;
• within the framework of the pre-use law, the territory of use of the patented object cannot be expanded;
• cannot be held liable for the unlawful use of an intellectual property object if such a person did not know and should not have known about the violation and carried out the use on the instructions or instructions of another person.

Thus, the presented document can be considered a certain consequence of the evolution of explanations of the higher courts on the protection and protection of intellectual property, concluded Maxim Ali.

Regardless of what the final version of the Resolution will be adopted, lawyers in the field of intellectual property will have to pay close attention to it, the expert believes.

2013: Association with the Supreme Arbitration Court

In 2013, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, President Vladimir Putin proposed combining the Supreme and Supreme Arbitration (EAC) courts.

At the end of 2013, an amendment to the Constitution of the Russian Federation on the unification of the Armed Forces and the Supreme Council was adopted, which provides for the abolition of the latter and the transfer of its powers to the jurisdiction of the newly created Supreme Court of Russia. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation becomes the only supreme judicial body in civil, criminal, administrative and other cases, as well as in economic disputes.

St. Petersburg was chosen as the permanent seat of the Armed Forces, and its permanent mission will be located in Moscow. The Armed Forces provides for three new judicial boards: for economic disputes, for military personnel and disciplinary.

In accordance with the law adopted on the merger, on August 6, 2014, the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation ceased its work.

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