Maxim Ali has provided his comments to the legal press about the regulation of price comparison websites

Novaya Advokatskaya Gazeta has published an article on the changes to the law regulating the activities of price comparison websites.  The law has been developed by Rospotrebnadzor due to the lack of current regulation of organisations who share information about products and services for which they are not the retailer or provider.  The bill passed first reading stage of Parliament in June 2017.

According to Maxim Ali, Senior Associate at Maxima Legal, Specialist in IP/IT matters, the bill is reasonably light and introduces changes that are mainly of a technical nature.

In particular, Maxim drew attention to the provision under which price comparison websites do not incur liability for inadequate information about goods or services if it is not to different to those given by the seller or service provider. “Such provisions will allow price comparison websites to largely avoid liability as they can take steps to ensure effective publishing processes and require that sellers guarantee that information provided is correct”, stated Maxim Ali.

Maxim underlined that the limited scope for price comparison websites to incur liability puts them in a stronger position when dealing with consumers, according to Maxim, the lawmakers could have allowed for the websites to deal with claims from consumers in more situations.

Further to this, Maxim Ali noted the lack of clarify in the legal terms used which has not been resolved through amendments by the Russian government. In particular, the text of the bill refers only to goods and services: “This approach, firstly, does not take into account the potential for price comparison websites to be used for the supply of some other services called ‘work’. Of course, this lack of clarity can be eliminated through interpretation, however the courts can confuse these concepts which are divided into three categories under consumer law: goods, services and work”, commented Maxim Ali.

To read the full article, please click on the following link