Ukrainian sues for rights to his video used in HBO series
1 August 2025 21:37
Creative director Andriy Pryimachenko has reached a settlement with the American media giant HBO after a six-year lawsuit over the illegal use of his video work in the Chernobyl series. The decision was made by the District Court of the Southern District of New York, reports "Komersant Ukrainian".
Pryimachenko announced this on August 1 on his Facebook page:
“This is a significant precedent – when we managed to defend the copyright of a Ukrainian in a case with one of the world’s largest media companies.”
This refers to a fragment from the first episode of the series, which uses a visualization of the recording of telephone conversations of the Chernobyl NPP dispatchers on the night of the accident. Pryimachenko published this video back in 2013 on the YouTube channel “Studio Peredova”.
In 2019, after the premiere of the series, the author contacted the project’s director Craig Mazin, but received a response from HBO lawyers saying that the video was an “original product of the studio.”
However, the court sided with the Ukrainian. After years of litigation, the parties reached a settlement agreement.
“No matter how big the company is and no matter what country it comes from, you can’t take someone else’s work and pretend it’s yours,” Priymachenko emphasized.
This decision may become an important precedent in the protection of intellectual property of Ukrainian authors at the international level.
