Point of law: under which circumstances a web hosting provider may be found liable for the violation of exclusive right to the content placed on his peer-to-peer file sharing server?

Ratio decidendi: the provider is not liable for the information being exchanged as long as he does not initiate its transmission, does not choose the receiver of the information in question, does not affect its integrity, and also if he takes preventive measures against using the object of the exclusive right without the consent of the right holder. When considering analogues cases, the Commercial courts must take into account the degree of provider’s involvement into the transmission, preserving and processing of the information, as well as his ability to control and change its content.

Practical consequences: the Presidium has noted that, given the current progress of WWW, the ratio decidendi of the present case may extend to the cases of liability of owners of social and file sharing Internet resources. The Judgment also says that prior court decisions in analogous cases if inconsistent with this interpretation may be reversed in the procedure and within the limits envisaged by Art 311 of the Commercial Procedure Code.