The Central District Court of Barnaul satisfied the claim for recognition of prohibited information on the Russian website of the iHerb online store, which specializes in the sale of vitamins, dietary supplements and health products. This decision was made on August 24, it follows from the file of the court.
According to the case file, the court decided to restrict the work of the Russian version of the website (ru.iherb.com). The decision has not yet entered into force and can be appealed to the Court of Appeal. If it comes into force, Roskomnadzor may include the online store in the Unified Register of sites with information prohibited in Russia, and operators will have to restrict access to it within 24 hours.
As a source familiar with the course of the trial told Vedomosti, the prosecutor's office filed a claim with the court on the basis of an appeal by the Altai regional public organization of consumers “Narodny kontrol”. The interlocutor of the publication noted that in the appeal, the executive director of the People's Control, Nikolai Yakushev, indicated that the site contained information about the free sale and delivery of goods to the territory of Russia that contain prohibited plants from the list of plants containing psychotropic, narcotic, potent or poisonous substances … We are also talking about homeopathic medicines disguised as dietary supplements without registration certificates and special nutrition for athletes, the import of which is prohibited into the country without special permission from the Ministry of Sports.
In total, according to the newspaper, the organization counted on the iHerb website more than 2 thousand items that violate Russian laws, but not all of them were included in the statement of claim.
Ilya Mikin, CEO of iHerb in Russia, told Forbes that the company considers the court's decision excessive and will challenge it. According to him, iHerb considers the decision to be inconsistent with the spirit of the law “On information, information technology and information protection.” “In our opinion, it is impossible to completely block an important resource that is used by millions of users, and which also contains thousands of different product categories,” he said.
At the beginning of 2019, the Zasviyazhsky District Court of Ulyanovsk ordered iHerb to remove applications from the AppStore and Google Play in Russia, since uncertified dietary supplements were sold through the resource. At the same time, as reported, users could have problems with access to the store's website. Subsequently, iHerb deleted the data on the commodity items mentioned in the lawsuit, after which in August of the same year the Ulyanovsk Regional Court overturned this decision. However, in early 2020, the regional court changed its position and ordered the removal of the application of the iHerb online store.
In April 2020, Roskomnadzor entered the IP addresses of the iHerb mobile application into the register of prohibited resources. In the summer of 2020, the company filed a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court. In February of this year, the Russian Supreme Court upheld the decision to block the iHerb mobile application.
