EPAM Law successfully represented JSC Prosveshcheniye Publishing House (VEB.RF Group) in a long-running dispute concerning the protection of exclusive rights to mathematics textbooks for Grades 5–6 authored by N.Ya. Vilenkin, V.I. Zhokhov, A.S. Chesnokov and S.I. Shvartsburd.

The claimant, LLC IOC Mnemosina, filed a claim with the Moscow Arbitrazh Court seeking to prohibit the use of textbooks published by Prosveshcheniye Publishing House and to recover compensation in excess of RUB 146 million. In support of its claims, the claimant alleged that the textbooks published by the client were derivative works based on the claimant’s editions and contained borrowed fragments.

EPAM Law developed a comprehensive legal defence based on the argument that Prosveshcheniye Publishing House’s current textbooks had been developed independently of the claimant’s textbooks, with the involvement of an additional author. A court-appointed linguistic expert examination was conducted in the case, and its findings fully confirmed this position.

The Moscow Arbitrazh Court dismissed the claims in full. The judgment was upheld by the Ninth Arbitrazh Appellate Court and the Intellectual Property Court.

The project was handled by EPAM Law’s Intellectual Property/TMT Practice team, comprising Pavel Sadovsky, Partner and Head of Practice, Maxim Tabolo, Senior Associate, and Nelli Zavarzina, Junior Associate.