God's gift and scrambled eggs

The grandson of the famous poetess and translator Adelina Adalis managed to recover 200 thousand rubles from the McDonald's network for the misuse of his grandmother's works in the company's commercial

The grandson of the famous poetess and translator Adelina Adalis managed to recover 200 thousand rubles from the McDonald's network for the misuse of his grandmother's works in the company's commercial

We are talking about the lyrics of the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore "The Last Poem", fragments of which were translated into Russian in 1934 by Adeline Adalis. Later, the composer Alexei Rybnikov set the verses to music - this song is known to many from the movie "You Never Dreamed of".

In early 2015, McDonald's launched an Egg and Porridge commercial, using a fragment of the song as the musical accompaniment. Soon Ivan Sergeev, the direct heir of Adelina Adalis, filed a lawsuit with the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow to recover compensation for copyright infringement.

The defendants were four legal entities: CJSC McDonald's Moscow, LLC McDonald's, as well as the creators of the video - LLC Star Reachers and LLC Snegiri-Music. In addition, the plaintiff tried to involve six federal channels in the case, which broadcast the video about “Egg and Porridge” for a month, having played it in total about 1000 times, but the court refused to do so.

Initially, the amount of compensation indicated by the plaintiff was 35 million rubles, but later its amount was reduced to 5 million. Ivan Sergeev himself found it difficult to substantiate the claimed amounts, but his lawyer Elena Goremykina explained that these amounts correlate with the profits of the defendants received during the broadcast roller.

On April 26, the Tverskoy District Court decided to pay the plaintiff 200,000 rubles from four defendants.

Adeline’s grandson Adalis insists that he was driven to file a lawsuit by a desire to defend the honor and dignity of his family: “People of my generation remember and know this song. Words with such a deep meaning cannot be used in advertisements about meatballs, eggs, without even asking permission.

Representatives of McDonald's, contacted by Novaya Gazeta, were unable to comment on the situation, but we are ready to publish the company's response as soon as it is formulated.

Galina Sokolova - especially for Novaya Gazeta