The legal company Lynwood Investments, which initially contacted the Russian law enforcement agencies, acting on behalf of the Rambler Group, in the USA, a lawsuit against F5 Networks related to asserting exclusive rights to Nginx. The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco in the US District Court for Northern California. Igor Sysoev and Maxim Konovalov, as well as investment funds Runa Capital and E.Ventures, are included among the co-defendants in the lawsuit. The amount of damage is estimated at $750 million (for comparison, Nginx was F5 Networks for $650 million). The investigation affects both the NGINX server and the commercial software NGINX Plus based on it.
F5 Networks Company The plaintiff's claims are unfounded, including referring to the decision of the Russian Prosecutor's Office, which stopped the investigation without finding evidence of the guilt of the co-founders of Nginx. F5 Networks lawyers are confident that in the proceedings launched in the United States, the allegations against the defendants are equally groundless.
Interestingly, in April the Rambler Group company announced agreement with Lynwood Investments and a ban on conducting business on behalf of Rambler Group. At the same time, Lynwood Investments retained the right to prove damages in the NGINX case and demand compensation for them in its own name and in its own interests. The English-language press release provides additional details, according to which Lynwood and its affiliates owned a significant stake in Rambler and Rambler transferred ownership of NGINX to Lynwood.
The assignment of rights was approved by Rambler's board of directors.
Let us recall that in December last year, against former Rambler employees developing Nginx, criminal case under Part 3 of Art. 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (βViolation of copyright and related rightsβ). The accusation was based on the allegation that the development of Nginx was carried out during the working hours of Rambler employees and on behalf of the management of this company. Rambler claims that the employment contract stipulated that the employer retained exclusive rights to developments carried out by company employees. The resolution presented by law enforcement officers stated that nginx is the intellectual property of Rambler, which was distributed as a free product illegally, without the knowledge of Rambler and as part of criminal intent.
During the development of nginx, Igor Sysoev worked at Rambler as a system administrator, not a programmer, and worked on his project as a hobby, and not at the direction of his superiors. According to Igor Ashmanov, who at that time was one of the leaders of Rambler, when hiring Sysoev, the opportunity to work on his own project was specifically agreed upon. In addition, the system administrator's job responsibilities did not include software development.
Source: opennet.ru