Specifics of Prevention of Intellectual Property Rights Abuse on the Internet

This master thesis investigates the claim to prevent violations of intellectual property rights on the Internet as an effective means to prevent ongoing and future violations. Based on analysis of legislation, judicial practice and doctrine, this paper proposes recommendations to improve Russian national legislation in this area. The study was conducted using the following scientific research methods: monitoring the regulation development of the prevention of intellectual property rights violations, analysis and generalization, induction and deduction, concretization and systematization. The paper concludes that the threat of rights violation is an independent legal ground for submission of a demand for restraint. It also concludes that the claim to ban the creation of technical conditions addressed to the information intermediary – a frequent claim in copyright protection cases – is an abstract demand and should not be satisfied. On the contrary, a claim requiring website owners to use digital fingerprint technology, makes it possible to stop copyright infringement in the future. Particular attention is paid to art. 17 of the recently adopted European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. The study investigates the necessity of the article and discusses its content. It also considers the co-existence of art. 17, provisions of the Directive on Electronic Commerce and current practice of the European Court of Justice.