OREANDA-NEWS. The first Intellectual Property Court has opened in Russia. The court operates via a fully automated judicial workflow, from claim registration to making judgments and archiving cases. The project was implemented by CROC.

“The number of patent disputes and copyright and trademark cases increases every year,” says Lyudmila Novoselova, President of the Intellectual Property Court. “A specialized and fully automated court will allow for uniform court practices for the protection of intellectual property rights, enable the forming of a team of niche experts, and facilitate the improvement of court system transparency.”

“The technology has significantly extended the options available to Russian citizens. Now any citizen, wherever he or she lives, can file an electronic claim via the Internet, use the video conferencing capacity of the nearest state arbitration court to remotely attend court sessions on his or her case, and review a court ruling on a website published within the period provided by law. Physical attendance in Moscow is not required and electronic communications are sufficient,” explains Oleg Borzykh, Head of IT Adoption, Intellectual Property Court.

“Such courts exist in Europe and the US. First of all, we followed the German model. In Germany, patent-related cases are tried via judicial proceedings presided over by a board of technical specialists and lawyers and - just as in Russia - can be remotely appealed by citizens in higher courts. I think that the transition to an electronic format will increase the number of lawsuits. There were 5,000 court actions in 2012, almost twice as many as in 2011,” states Lyudmila Novoselova.

The project included the integration of four application systems and took nine months. The solution is built on a customized judicial document management platform and browser access to the system is provided. The platform was developed by CROC and deployed in 55 state arbitration courts, i.e. almost half of all such entities. The system allows for case registration over the Internet, website publication of court rulings, control of procedural time limits, document record-keeping and operational and statistical report generation. The solution is integrated with the following IT systems: Arbitration Case Index, My Arbitrator, Bank of State Arbitration Court Rulings, and the Federal Tax Service system.

“We have customized the system's software logic in order to allow the Intellectual Property Court to make rulings both as a trial court and as a court of cassation. Primary documents cannot be forwarded to a judge who has already participated in a trial on the same case. Therefore, we have created an automated mechanism for cassation transfer to another judge,” says Mikhail Pilipenko, Large Account Director, CROC. “The project required deep understanding of the subject matter by our employees because not all legislative instruments which regulate court operations had become effective by the system design phase. Therefore, we carefully reviewed statutes, regulations and other legal instruments and worked closely with the customer on requirement definition. In addition, we made a point to be proactive.”

In the future, it is expected that an automated judicial record management system for state arbitration courts (including Intellectual Property Court) will be integrated with the interagency electronic interaction system for federal executive bodies as part of current e-government and electronic digital signature initiatives.