In the wake of the Law on Advertising, which came into force on July 1 2006, the State Duma adopted some changes to the Criminal Procedure Code. The Criminal Code already contains provisions for the punishment of IP infringers and in past years those sanctions have been made harder. Now the new procedure makes it easier for law enforcement bodies to deal with infringement cases in the field of copyright. At present, only public prosecutors are empowered to initiate criminal cases against infringers according to Section 146 of the Criminal Code. The new provision of the Criminal Procedure Code empowers the police to prosecute wrongdoers in copyright matters. A criminal case according to Section 146 may be initiated if the damage to the copyright owner is more than R50,000 ($2,000). A crime of this calibre shall be punished by imprisonment of up to five years.

According to the police, more than 500 people were convicted in 2005 according to Section 146, and more than 1000 cases were directed to the courts. But this does not reflect the real situation with copyright infringement cases, many of which remain uncovered. In order to improve the rate of uncovering the crimes in that filed the prime minister introduced the provisions that enable police prosecutors to conduct preliminary investigation of cases related to copyright infringement. The CD and DVD manufacturers are interested in the first place in the introduction of those provisions because previously the police could only conduct spot checks and then send their report to the public prosecutor's office. In their turn, the public prosecutors are burdened with heavy crimes and copyright matters are on the periphery of their attention to some extent.

Now the larger number of law enforcement people have received powers to deal with these criminal cases. In practice however, the police have become more active in prosecuting IP cases even before adoption of the new provisions. Very often they conduct checks at the retail and wholesale outlets and consult IP experts on whether the use of a particular intellectual property is legal or not. The new powers will make it easier for them to work and embrace a wider scope of specific procedures necessary in these cases.