Russian President Vladimir Putin called for fighting pirated products by lowering prices of legal products

Sunday, January 17, 2021

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Russian President Vladimir Putin called for fighting pirated products by lowering prices of legal products and firing the directors of companies that lease premises to counterfeiters. "It's necessary to decrease prices of legal products, then there'll be no counterfeiting," the head of state said at a meeting with government officials on Monday. Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref reported to the president that a special commission on intellectual property is at work, and that a check of state-run companies has been carried out. "Of eight checked companies, facts of mass production of counterfeit products were exposed at five; they are all defense companies. /Deputy Prime Minister/ Sergei Ivanov has made a decision - if such facts are exposed in the future, all directors will be sacked," Gref said. "Why in the future?" Putin demanded, exasperated. The minister added that of the five directors three had been fired, and that "the dismissal procedures against another two are nearing completion." At a meeting of the board of the Prosecutor General's Office in February, Putin expressed discontent over the protection of intellectual property in Russia. "The problem of protecting intellectual property remains acute," he said, "according to experts, the volume of fake products on the domestic market of videos reaches almost 70 percent and that of software - some 90 percent. Almost all the software is pirated," the president said. According to calculations by the International Intellectual Property Alliance - a coalition of seven U.S. trade association bringing together more than 1,900 companies, their losses in China made up 2.4 billion dollars in 2005, and 1.76 billion dollars in Russia. At an expanded meeting of the Russian Justice Ministry in March, Vladimir Putin ordered the Ministry, "in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry and other bodies, to actively participate in the harmonization of the Russian and international legislations." "Ensuing legal protection of intellectual property comes to the foreground. Law-enforcement bodies need juridically adjusted and effective instruments of struggle against counterfeiting," the head of state emphasized.

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