A few days ago we shared here on the blog the news that has gone viral on the internet, as it was revealed that Rambler (a popular Russian web search engine) filed a lawsuit against Nginx, in which Rambler claimed ownership of the source code of the Nginx web server , arguing that the copyright belongs to Rambler.
I know all this because the creator of Nginx was working for him at the time he wrote the web server's source code, something Igor Sysoev has never denied . This matter led to a raid on Nginx Inc.'s Moscow offices by Russian police, during which several employees were arrested and taken into custody for questioning.
This move by Rambler has caused great annoyance and negative responses from internet users who expressed their feelings on different social networks and mainly on Twitter where Nginx shared some screenshots of the search warrant.
Furthermore, this raid was also strongly criticized in Russia by several high-ranking officials, including a chief of staff who argues that after 15 years, the statute of limitations for filing a copyright infringement complaint has expired.
Now, in more recent news, information was released about a meeting of the Rambler Board of Directors held at the initiative of Sberbank (which owns a 46.5% stake in the Rambler Group) in which it was decided to sever relations with the law firm Lynwood Investments , withdraw the request to law enforcement agencies and request the termination of the criminal case against NGINX employees.
According to information from the lawyer at the Center for Digital Rights:
Rambler's request is invalid, so the criminal case cannot be stopped solely on the basis of reconciliation of the parties: the decision on the absence of corpus delicti in criminal cases is the responsibility of the investigating authorities.
Although the case does not proceed as Rambler expected, he does not abandon his claims, as he has said that he will try to resolve the problem through civil law.
In particular, it is planned to organize a meeting with the founders of NGINX and representatives of the company F5 (who acquired NGINX at the beginning of the year) to consult on how to resolve the situation and to become familiar with the materials that indicate a possible violation of the rights of Rambler.
At the same time, the attacks against NGINX are not Rambler's only dubious legal activity lately, as they also announced online that a court session will be held on December 20, in which Rambler's lawsuit against Twitch will be considered.
In this other lawsuit by Ramble, they are trying to recover compensation of 180 billion rubles because some Twitch users streamed English Premier League matches on their channels (Rambler bought the exclusive rights to show the Premier League in Russia).
Rambler reports that 36 views of these streams were recorded on Twitch and Rambler intends to recover 5 million rubles for every user who watched the game. In addition to compensation, the claims also include the blocking of Twitch in Russia.
The Moscow City Court has already ruled to temporarily block the broadcasting of Premier League matches on Twitch (the requirement applies only to individual broadcasts, not the entire service, and Twitch has already provided Rambler with access to tools to combat pirate broadcasts).
These two Rambler cases seem made out of desperation to obtain some income at least for the case against NGINX, since the case against Twitch is more logical since the purchase of rights supports it. Although finally this type of movement by Rambler reminds me a lot of the case of Gnome against Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC.
