MOSCOW, August 2 (RIA Novosti) - RosBusinessConsulting news agency has filed a $10.7- mln law suit against the publisher of popular Russian business daily Vedomosti, the agency said Wednesday.
"The company's lawyers have filed this suit in response to the illegal use, distribution and remake of articles taken from the RBC news agency's newswire without attribution during 2002-2005," the agency said in a statement.
In December 2005, Business News Media, which publishes Vedomosti in Russia, launched a $10-million lawsuit against RBC Information Systems, the parent company of the RosBusinessConsulting news agency, for using about a hundred Vedomosti stories without attribution.
The next round of preliminary hearings on the Vedomosti suit against RBC have been postponed until August 7.
In today's countersuit, RBC lawyers said Vedomosti writers used about 130 articles without proper attribution, and demanded compensation in the amount of 286.11 million rubles (about $10.7 mln).
But Mikhail Dubik, general director of Business News Media, said RBC had filed the law suit to distract public opinion from his company's proceedings against the news agency, and delay the trial.
"Their goal is to file a 'mirror suit' and make audiences believe that it matches the Vedomosti suit against them," Dubik said, adding that RBC had no chance of winning the countersuit.
He said Vedomosti had always referred to RBC as a source when it published its materials.
"The law suit refers to short news articles that were used in the News in Brief section [of the newspaper], and Vedomosti always attributed each news piece to its source without attempting to claim copyrights on them," Dubik said.
The arbitration court has set the preliminary hearings on the RBC suit against Vedomosti for August 8.
Business News Media is owned by Pearson (The Financial Times publisher), Dow Jones (The Wall Street Journal publisher), and Independent Media (owned by Sanoma the WSOY media holding). Vedomosti is thought to have an annual turnover of $50 million.
Moscow-based RBC Information Systems has a capitalization of $760 million and the group also comprises the RBC TV business television channel and e-media.
