Russia needs to build a favorable environment for the protection of intellectual property to make content creation profitable for its owners, Google Russia's Communication Director Marina Zhunich said Tuesday.
Speaking at a seminar on economics of intellectual property on the web, Zhunich said a well functioning intellectual property protection system is required to encourage innovation and increase revenue from copyrighted content.
A representative from the Education Ministry said the intellectual property protection strategy needs to focus on three components: a flexible state-owned electronic system to provide registration and administration services to copyright owners; an effective mechanism to deal with copyright breaches and disputes; and development of a digitally-minded creative community.
This strategy will strengthen the country's creative industry, create new workplaces and prevent the recently established Intellectual Property Court from being clogged up with cases that can be mediated and resolved outside the court room, he said.
While there is no correlation between the magnitude of legal threats against piracy and revenue collected from copyrighted material sales, having a legal framework that protects content authors will result in a greater number of online outlets offering licensed material, Michael Masnick, a technology analyst, said at Tuesday's seminar.
Oleg Novikov, head of the Eksmo publishing house, warned that if there was no protection from the government, authors would stop writing altogether and find another way to make money.
The Intellectual Property Court was established within the commercial court system on Feb. 1, 2013 to deal with IP disputes in line with international standards of IP protection.
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