Russia's biggest advertising agencies are uniting against clients who steal ideas or fail to pay up.

Adventa, BBDO, DMB&B and Video International have decided to tackle an issue that poses a greater problem for Russian agencies than their Western counterparts.

Russia's law is such that, even if a firm is caught stealing ideas from an advertising agency, it is often impossible to see justice done.

To file a lawsuit, the defrauded agency needs to have documents proving its copyright of the idea. To make matters worse, the relevant laws often prove ambiguous.

The firms say they decided to act because the situation has worsened since the August 1998 financial crisis.

Video International CEO Alexander Romanov said the culprits often organize a tender, collect ideas from three or four advertising agencies and then hand them over to a fifth agency, which develops the stolen ideas.

"The fraud's techniques are well-known but we have no instrument to combat them. Worse, clients are fewer now and new clients appearing on the market are unfamiliar to us," he said.

Kommersant Daily newspaper caused a stir when the agencies announced their move against the offenders. It published a black list of "dishonest companies" for which it said the doors to the advertising agencies are locked from now on.

Adventa CEO Dmitry Korobkov told The Russia Journal the real situation is different.

"The truth is that a number of advertising companies, including Adventa, BBDO, DMB&B and Video International Production, have agreed on exchange of information about dishonest clients," he said.

"In other words, if I receive information that Client X has not paid DMB&B, I will probably refuse to deal with him if he comes to my office. The last thing on our minds was to set up a practice that might abuse our existing or potential clients."

Agencies say they only have a chance of winning a lawsuit if they have copies of the original advertising backed up by a contract signed by the client stating that the agency retains copyright.

But even a court ruling in favor of an advertising agency does not necessarily mean victory over the plagiarizing or nonpaying client.

Some firms report they have been unable to get offenders to pay up for as much as two years after winning a case.

Video International's Alexander Romanov said part of the problem lies with the way Russia perceives the nature of advertising.

"Our ad market is quite nascent; unlike in the West, where any intellectual product is regarded as fully fledged merchandise, in Russia it is still believed that ideas represent something immaterial which cannot be sold for money," he said.

"If clients acknowledged that intellectual property has its price, maybe they would not have stolen ideas from the advertising agencies so often."