The court satisfied the claim of Moscow judges against the founders of “Dissernet”

On March 15, the Gagarinsky Court of Moscow fully satisfied the demands of Moscow judges Anna Starodub and Pavel Markov against the founders of “Dissernet” Andrey Zayakin and Andrey Rostovtsev. The judges demanded to recognize “defamatory and unreliable” information about plagiarism in their dissertations. This was reported by the Center for the Protection of Mass Media Rights.

The court ordered the founders of “Dissernet” to publish rebuttals, to pay compensation for moral damages in the amount of 10 thousand rubles in favor of each of the plaintiffs, and also declared illegal the use of personal data of judges on the project’s website. According to the court’s decision, access to the website pages with information about judges should be blocked.

Ekaterina Shmyghina, a lawyer at the Center for the Protection of Media Rights, who represented Andrey Zayakin’s interests in court, believes that the decision cannot be called legal. It will be appealed.

“Dissernet” experts analyzed the dissertations of the judges and came to the conclusion that they may contain a large amount borrowed from scientific texts published by other authors. After that, the judges were left with academic degrees, but later the court canceled the corresponding orders. In the summer of 2023, judges filed almost identical lawsuits for the protection of honor, dignity and business reputation, writes the Center for the Protection of Mass Media Rights.