On the Composition of Damages for the Infringement of an Exclusive Right

The civil legislation of Russia does not contain provisions that would specify the structure of damages suffered by a right holder as a result of an infringement of an exclusive right or methods of calculating such damages. In practice, compensation as an alternative measure of liability has largely replaced the recovery of damages. Consequently, the issue of the structure of these damages has not been sufficiently addressed in Russian law. In particular, it is unclear whether the concept of actual harm (loss suffered) applies and what it may entail. The purpose of the article is to study the legal essence of the losses of the rightholder arising as a result of violation of the exclusive right, and their analysis in the light of general civilistic ideas about the content (composition) of damages, covering real damage and lost profits. The research was carried out using general scientific methods and techniques of formal logic (analysis and synthesis, deduction and induction), as well as special methods of cognition, primarily formal legal and comparative legal analysis. Conclusions. The specificity of the losses of the rightholder lies in the fact that they are exclusively financial in nature. The ideal (immaterial) nature of the object of exclusive right dictates the impossibility of applying to these losses the category of real damage, understood as a consequence of loss, destruction or damage to property. In this regard, the losses of the rightholder are reduced to lost profits, which can be understood in a broad sense and also include income earned by the violator himself. This feature makes them related to pure economic losses and allows us to say that in their essence they represent a special case of such losses, reimbursable by virtue of a direct indication of the law.