With the development and improvement of market relations, intangible values are becoming widespread. So, in the dashing nineties in Russia, business reputation was hardly so popular that it needed patronage from the state. So it turned out that the first part of the Civil Code does not fully reflect the process of protecting such a relatively new concept for us as the business reputation of the organization. Let us dwell on it in more detail.
The business reputation of the company, as already mentioned, refers to intangible goods and represents the assessment that consumers, suppliers and other counterparties give to this legal entity. This category is on a par with the brand name, trademark, know-how.
It should be noted that goodwill can be either positive or negative. In the first case, the counterparties are confident in the company, its financial results and sustainability, the cooperation is, besides the contractual, also trusting. As for the negative side, in this case, neither suppliers, nor buyers, nor other individuals and legal entities that make up the environment trust the company due to its unstable position in the market.
This means that the business reputation of the organization has a qualitative assessment. However, it is worth mentioning the quantitative assessment, which in foreign practice is called Goodwill. The bottom line is that the value of goodwill is the difference between the market price that is offered to the owner of the asset (the company is acquired as a property complex) and the value of all assets and liabilities on the balance sheet at the date of purchase.
Back to the quality side, which is a little more interesting. Obviously, a positive opinion of a company attracts customers, a negative opinion - vice versa. But often in the market, legal entities can face such injustice as the dissemination of knowingly false information about them, discrediting the “good name”. Of course, in such a situation, it is necessary to defend your position, or at least try to partially restore the trust of counterparties. For this, judicial protection is applied.
If, for example, the mass media disseminated data that discredited the reputation of the company, then you can actually go to court and demand a rebuttal in the same media.
Since the legal entity conducts business activities, goodwill can directly affect income. If, as a result of the dissemination of false information, the company incurs losses, then you can go to court with a claim to make up for the losses. However, in this case, it is likely to encounter certain problems.
For example, if any information has grown on the Internet, then even after a refutation it will “wander” through its open spaces for a long time. Such injustice is eradicated in the Civil Code by applying the concept of “moral damage”. And here the fun begins.
A legal entity is an artificially created entity, so there can be no talk of moral damage . However, since 2003 there has been an increase in cases of satisfaction of such claims, so the court may well make concessions.
Business reputation, in addition to the Civil Code, can be protected by the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in cases where, for example, there was an illegal use by another person of a company’s trademark.
Summing up, it should be said that the legislation in the field of this issue requires certain adjustments, since the development of market relations is impossible without comprehensive protection by the state of the intangible benefits of the company. The business reputation of the company in conditions of increasing competition is of great importance, and each manufacturer who is interested in his business must be sure that he will not be left without protection in case of encroachment on his good name.