Moscow Kommersant-Daily 13 Mar 97 p 1 Report by Yulia Papilova
"The Americans Have Stood Up for Russian Newspapers"

The New York Federal Court granted the suit filed by the ITAR-TASS U.S. Bureau and eight Russian-language newspapers from Russia, Israel, and the United States against the Russian language New York weekly Kuryer. Oleg Pogrebnoy, an emigrant from Ukraine, is to pay the plaintiffs $500,000. "The sole founder of Kuryer was Ukrainian emigrant Oleg Pogrebnoy," Mikhail Kolesnichenko, president of ITAR-TASS USA, Inc., told your correspondent. "He correctly assessed the immigrants' hunger for information from Russia and created a kind of a digest of Russian newspapers."

According to Kolesnichenko, in the two years of the weekly's existence Pogrebnoy earned $5 million. He simply took Russian newspapers, clipped material from them, and reprinted it. For the most part he used articles from the Russian newspapers Pravda, Moskovskiy Komsomolets, Argumenty i fakty, Megapolis-Ekspress, Moskovskiye Novosti, and Ekho Planety, as well as material from the ITAR-TASS news agency, the emigrant weekly V Novom Svete, and the Israeli magazine Balagan. These publications, on the ITAR-TASS USA initiative, sued for infringement of copyright at the New York Federal Court. The plaintiffs demanded that Pogrebnoy be banned from using their material, and pay them $2 million. The judicial procedure has continued for two years: There were so many documents that the parties to the case had to hire a minibus to carry them.

According to Megapolis-Ekspress editor Vladimir Volin, sometimes Pogrebnoy did not even remove the correspondents' names or erase the line "M.E. [Megapolis-Ekspress] correspondent." Most reports were reprinted from Argumenty i fakty. "It needs to be said that in his own way Pogrebnoy is a very able person," Argumenty i fakty Deputy Chief Editor Nikolay Zyatkov pointed out. "He felt the market situation very well, and selected the choice stuff. From our weekly he took crime reports and human interest stories, less often political and analytical comments. From others, he would take something scandalous." The court found in favor of the plaintiffs. The court's 40-page ruling notes that "Pogrebnoy easily confessed to cutting out material from the plaintiff newspapers and using it in publishing Kuryer. But instead of the claimed $2 million the plaintiffs will receive only $504,000. Of this amount, $500,000 will be paid by Pogrebnoy himself. The rest will be paid by Linco Printing that printed Kuryer. Under U.S. laws, the print shop was to have made sure that the client's material belongs to him. Seventy five percent will go to ITAR-TASS USA. The rest is due to the affected publications. The court also forbade Pogrebnoy from using the plaintiffs' material in the future.

According to Kolesnichenko, during these past two years, a number of original articles appeared in the weekly: Pogrebnoy covered the court case. "He simply poured mud on those who took him to court," the ITAR-TASS USA chief said. Kolesnichenko described the result of the extended litigation as unprecedented: "For the first time Russian intellectual property has been defended in the United States. We did not believe that the court would do anything at all. "Nikolay Zyatkov added: "This is a victory for the entire Russian press. They even reprint your stuff in the United States."