HOW TO RECOGNIZE COMMENTS ON THE INTERNET LEFT ON SITES BY UNKNOWN OWNERS AS UNTRUE?

One of the most unpleasant types of unfair competition is the dissemination of unreliable information by such competitors with the aim of spoiling the positive character of business reputation. Mostly, such actions are committed by anonymous authors, and/or using Internet sites whose owners cannot be identified, or such sites are registered abroad and it is not possible to obtain information upon a corresponding request.

The creation of special sites for the dissemination of information, which damages the positive nature of business reputation, is also common.

In such a case, the desire to protect one's rights in the field of protection of a positive business reputation on the territory of Ukraine may turn out to be quite problematic. Because as part of civil proceedings, in order to file a lawsuit with the court, the plaintiff must indicate the last name and initials of the defendant, or the name of the legal entity, the address of the defendant's location, and the means of communication with him in the statement of claim.

And what to do when such information cannot be established a priori?

As we wrote earlier, referring to the "Who is" resource does not always yield results, since the information presented there is often confidential, and the mentioned Internet sites are almost always registered abroad. Also, the application of legal requests to domain name registrars in Ukraine is fruitless, since not only legal requests are repeatedly sent, but also the corresponding requests for information by the court in most cases remain unanswered.

In such a case, there is only one way out of such a situation, and that is to try to establish a legal fact of importance by declaring the information to be untrue in a separate non-suitable proceeding. To do this, it is necessary to file a lawsuit with the court with a corresponding statement, add evidence that will confirm the fact of taking actions aimed at establishing the proper defendant (evidence of sending attorney requests, etc.).

However, regardless of judicial practice and the relevant decision of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, the courts of the first instance, and sometimes of the appellate instance, refuse even to open proceedings, noting that the case allegedly involves competition between the parties.

Such court decisions quite often have to be challenged not only in the court of appeal, but also to the Supreme Court of Ukraine, which significantly delays the court process, which in turn causes additional damage to the person about whom the false information was spread.

For example, the court of first instance, before refusing to open a separate non-actionable proceeding, must request information from the relevant domain name registrars, and only if this information is established, the court must refuse to open a proceeding on the case.

Thus, within the framework of a separate non-suitable proceeding, the fact that the disseminated information is unreliable can be established.