Maxim Ali has provided his comments on the landmark case of the Court of Intellectual Rights on Big Data for Pravo.ru and Advokatskaya Gazeta

The Court of Intellectual Rights (CIR) issued a decision in a dispute between Vkontakte and the start-up Double Data, which had been using data from users accounts on the social network to evaluate the creditworthiness of potential and current clients of banks. The Court ruled that the social network has an exclusive right to information users’ data, including information which is publicly accessible.

Head of the IP/IT Practice at Maxima Legal, Maxim Ali considers that whilst the judgment is not yet final, the conclusions of the CIR may have a ‘domino effect’ across the industry of internet marketing and impact literally every company in the sector since it is impossible to operate without services similar to those offered by Double Data.

“According to the Court on Intellectual Rights, the law does not place an exclusive right to the data regardless of the intention of the database operator, determining that the main criterion is essentially the costs incurred,” explained Maxim Ali in the commentary for Advokatskaya Gazeta, noting the significant costs incurred by Vkontakte due to the size of its database.

In addition, the current assessment of the CIR situation might lead to the monopoly by social networks of their users’ profiles. “There was a second defendant in the case, who reached a settlement with the social network; the defendant signed with the company a contract for the same services that had previously been provided to him by Double Data. It cannot be excluded that at appeal or on review of the case, a court might agree with the respondent and rule that Vkontakte is abusing the law and is trying to monopolise the market for its users’ data”, Maxim explained to Portal.ru.

To read the full text of the article, please see the Advokatskaya Gazeta and Pravo.ru websites.