Imagine opening a software marketplace or visiting a competitor’s website, only to find… your own product. It has the same features, the same logic, and even crashes at the exact same bugs. Or, worse yet, your former lead developer resigns and, a month later, releases software suspiciously similar to the one you were paying them to build.
Intellectual property theft in the IT sector results in substantial financial losses. However, do not rush to publish angry posts on social media. A single misstep now could cost you crucial evidence in court.
As a practicing attorney, I have prepared a step-by-step guide on what to do if your software is stolen and how to leverage the legal tools provided by the legislation of the Republic of Belarus.
Who Stole the Software? Analyzing the Scenarios
Your defense strategy will vary depending on who encroached on your code: an external threat or an insider.
Scenario A. A Stab in the Back (Works Created for Hire)
This is a common situation: a programmer works on staff, writes code, quits, and takes their developments with them. They claim: “I am the author, I wrote this, I have the right.”
Here, Article 17 of the Law of the Republic of Belarus “On Copyright and Related Rights” applies. As a general rule, the exclusive right to a program created by an employee in the course of their employment duties is transferred to the employer.
But there is a catch! The automatic transfer of rights only triggers if creating code was part of the employee’s official job duties. The mere existence of an employment relationship does not automatically make any code written by the employee the company’s property. The key factor is whether developing this specific type of software was part of the employee’s job description.
If you hired a system administrator to configure servers, and they wrote a sales automation script on their own initiative, the court may award the rights to them, because “software development” was not in their job description.
Regarding works created for hire, there is an interesting judicial precedent in Russia. In Resolution No. 09AP-32915/2018 of August 1, 2018, the 9th Arbitration Appeal Court ruled that because the work was performed on weekends (when work is prohibited under the labor code), the creation of the disputed materials was not tied to employment duties, and therefore, the “work for hire” regime did not apply to them.
Scenario B. Freelance Contractors
You outsourced your development. The contract was either purely formal or non-existent. Pay close attention to Article 989 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Belarus: if the contract did not explicitly provide for the creation of the program and the transfer of rights, the exclusive right belongs to the contractor, not the client!
This is a classic trap. If you didn’t include the alienation (transfer) of rights in the contract, you paid the money, but the developer remains the owner of the code.
Scenario C. External Competitors
Here we are dealing with pure piracy or the modification of your code by third parties with whom you have no contractual relationship.
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“Piracy” involves direct copying. A competitor takes your script, cracks the DRM (if any), and sells (or distributes) it under their brand—or even yours. The violation here is obvious: illegal reproduction and distribution.
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“Cloning” involves modification. This is a more cunning approach. A competitor decompiles your code, renames variables, and rewrites individual modules, but the “core” and architecture remain yours. This is legally classified as the modification (derivative work) of a program. By law, modification is only allowed with the rightsholder’s consent. The only exception is adapting the software to the user’s hardware, but selling a clone does not fall under this exception. Your task here is to prove, through an expert technical examination, that the competitor’s code was not written from scratch but derived from yours.
What Exactly Are We Protecting? (Form vs. Content)
Before rushing to court, it is crucial to understand what exactly was stolen.
According to Clause 1, Article 13 of the Law “On Copyright and Related Rights,” copyright protection applies to all types of computer programs (including operating systems) that can be expressed in any language and in any form, including source text and object code. Computer programs are protected as literary works. This means that the form (the code/text itself) is protected, not the idea or function.
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Example 1: A competitor copied your code (copy-paste) or made cosmetic changes (renamed variables). This is an infringement (unauthorized modification).
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Example 2: A competitor saw how well your application works and wrote their own code from scratch to perform the same functions. This is not a copyright infringement.
Legal Remedies for Software Copyright Infringement
Once the theft of the code (and not just the idea) is confirmed, we turn to the legal remedies available for protecting intellectual property rights. Let’s look at the ones that actually work in the IT industry.
Method 1: Suppression of infringing actions (Injunctions)
This is a demand to remove your application from marketplaces, block a website hosting pirated software, or cease using your code in a competitor’s product.
How it works: You file a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the use of the program. Under Article 56 of the Copyright Law, the rightsholder can demand the cessation of actions that violate their right or create a threat of violation.
Method 2: Restoration of the situation that existed prior to the infringement
In the context of software, this can be implemented through the seizure of physical media. If a pirate sells your software on disks or flash drives (which is rare nowadays) or uses servers to distribute your code, the court can order the seizure and destruction of these storage devices at the infringer’s expense.
Method 3: Claiming Damages
This is the most difficult path. You must prove to the court exactly how much money you lost and establish a direct causal link between the infringer’s actions and your losses. Damages are divided into:
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Actual damages: Expenses you have incurred or will incur to restore your violated right.
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Lost profits: Revenue you would have received had your right not been violated.
Important note: Belarus has specific “Methodological Guidelines for Determining the Amount of Damages in Connection with the Infringement of Exclusive Rights to Intellectual Property Objects” (Approved by Order of the State Committee on Science and Technology No. 122 of May 26, 2021).
Method 4: Recovery of Statutory Compensation
This is one of the most effective protection methods in IT. Instead of painstakingly proving every dollar of damages (which is very difficult in the digital world), you can demand a fixed statutory compensation.
In Belarus, this ranges from 1 to 50,000 base units.
The court considers the nature of the violation, the duration of illegal use, the degree of the infringer’s guilt, and whether they generated revenue. Compensation allows you to protect your rights even when the exact amount of damage is impossible to prove, which is critical for software.
Method 5: Publication of the court decision concerning the infringement
Do not underestimate this method. For an IT company, reputation is a vital asset. Forcing an infringer to publicly admit that they stole someone else’s code can be much more painful than a financial penalty.
How to Prove Software Theft and Penalize the Infringer
There is no universal, one-size-fits-all mechanism for handling software IP disputes. The action plan depends on numerous factors: who the infringer is, where they are located (in Belarus or abroad), whether you have a contract with them, what evidence is available, the scale of the infringement, etc.
The most crucial step is securing (fixing) the evidence. You must secure evidence before you notify the infringer of your intentions. At the first sign of trouble, the disputed software can easily be deleted or altered.
The method of securing evidence depends on the situation. In some cases, it is advisable to use a Notary to inspect the application/website. This legally cements the fact of the violation as of a specific date. While a notary cannot inspect the backend code hidden on a server, a notarial protocol will document the “facade” of the infringement: visual similarities in the UI, identical section structures, unique program scenarios, or even accidental mentions of your brand left by the infringer. However, this method is not always applicable—especially if technical access is restricted (e.g., internal corporate systems) or the infringement occurs in a foreign jurisdiction where such evidence might be deemed irrelevant.
Simultaneously, you should gather all internal documentation: Technical Specifications (Tor), repository commit history, correspondence with developers, and source files. This is the foundation upon which your legal position will be built.
The next stage is pre-trial settlement. If the dispute is between legal entities or sole proprietors, sending a formal written claim (a Cease and Desist / Pre-trial Demand letter) is a mandatory requirement under Belarusian law. The mandatory pre-trial procedure is considered fulfilled upon receiving a refusal from the other party or failing to receive a response within the timeframe specified in the claim (or established by contract/law), which defaults to one month. The purpose of this claim is to demonstrate the legal validity of your demands and your readiness to seek damages or compensation in court. In disputes with individuals (non-sole proprietors), a formal claim is not strictly mandatory, but it often helps resolve the issue faster and cheaper than litigation.
If the pre-trial stage fails, you must go to court.
Choosing the right court is vital. If the defendant is located in Belarus, the dispute is handled by the Judicial Board for Intellectual Property Cases of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Belarus. The situation becomes much more complex if the software was stolen by a foreign entity. In that case, depending on several conditions, the case may be heard in a foreign court, in international arbitration, or, in some instances, in a Belarusian court. Selecting the correct jurisdiction depends on applicable law, the presence/absence of a prorogation (jurisdiction) agreement, and the realistic prospects of enforcing the court’s decision. This requires thorough legal analysis.
How Can an Attorney Help Protect Your Software?
Your code is your capital. Do not let anyone use it for free. Protecting intellectual property requires deep knowledge of IT law specifics and procedural nuances.
As an attorney, I am ready to provide you with comprehensive, highly qualified legal assistance at all the stages mentioned above: from properly securing evidence and drafting a legally airtight pre-trial claim to representing your interests in court.
Contact me today to protect your digital product professionally.