The civil legislation of Russia does not contain provisions that would specify the structure of damages suffered by a rightholder as a result of an infringement of an exclusive right or methods of calculating such damages. In practice, compensation as an alternative measure of liability has largely replaced the recovery of damages. Consequently, the issue of the structure of these damages has not been sufficiently addressed in Russian law. In particular, it is unclear whether the concept of actual harm (loss suffered) applies and what it may entail.

The aim of this article is to investigate the legal nature of the losses incurred by the rightholder and to analyse them within the framework of a general theory of damages that comprises actual loss suffered and lost profits.

The research was conducted using a variety of general scientific methods, such as analysis, synthesis, deduction, induction, as well as specialized methods such as formal dogmatic approach and comparative analysis.

Based on the results of the study, we can draw the following conclusions. A distinctive feature of the losses suffered by the rightholder is that they are purely financial in nature. The intangible nature of intellectual property makes it impossible to apply the concept of actual harm (loss suffered), which refers to physical loss, destruction, or harm to property, to these losses. Therefore, the rightholder’s damages can be reduced to lost profits, which may also include income generated by the infringer. This feature allows us to conclude that they represent a type of recoverable pure economic losses.