Pravo.ru published an overview of the annual conference on private law in the Urals, in which it quoted the speeches of Olesya Petrol, partner at Petrol Chilikov, and Alexander Yagelnitskiy, of counsel at Petrol Chilikov:

Alexander Yagelnitskiy, of counsel at Petrol Chilikov Law Offices, about damage to reputation:

If one regards damage to business reputation in pecuniary terms, i.e. as losses, the claimant must show what was lost. Providing evidence is possible, but moral harm cannot be demonstrated. The expert described a simple dispute as an example: a company was selling cakes, and somebody wrote that they were poisoned. Clients stopped buying them. Why did sales go down? Does it only stem from the negative feedback, or a combination of circumstances? In such events, courts assess the extent of impact the information had on the business operation.

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Notwithstanding the importance of maintaining the company’s image in practice, many disputes are not referred to courts. According to Olesya Petrol, partner at Petrol Chilikov Law Offices, this is due to the fact that locating a defendant, i.e. finding the author of the damaging text, is impossible. Nowadays, such information is published in Telegram channels, i.e. anonymously, the expert says.