Russian court orders HP to pay IP levy

A commercial court in Moscow has ruled that the national subsidiary of HP must pay a 108 million ruble ($1.9 million, €1.5million) levy.

As GDNOnline reports, the levy “is destined to compensate intellectual property rights holders” led by Nikita Mikhalkov, an Oscar-winning film director. The association of IP rights holders headed by Mikhalkov “collects from companies 1 percent from the selling price of audio-visual technology including equipment used to copy and store audio and video data for personal use.”

The purpose of the levy is to “compensate artists in a country where rampant piracy makes it difficult for performers and filmmakers to earn money from their work.”

The association has previously won similar court cases filed against Panasonic and Dell.

HP was accused of “importing equipment into Russia between October 2010 and June 2015 without paying the tax”; the OEM responded by asking the court to throw out the case, claiming that the association of IP rights holders had not sufficiently demonstrated that the imported equipment was for “personal and not professional use”.