American translator and orientalist Mark Reese has won a landmark copyright infringement lawsuit in an Uzbek court, with a university administrator ordered to pay 20.6 million soums, or 1,700 USD in compensation.
According to the Ministry of Justice, Mark Reese filed a civil lawsuit in April 2026 with the Uchtepa Inter-District Civil Court in Tashkent, seeking financial damages resulting from the unauthorized use of his work.
Following a review of the civil case, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiff. Under the final judgment, the defendant, M. Chutpulatov - an administrator at the Uzbekistan State University of World Languages (UzSWLU) - must pay Mark Reese 20.6 million soums in statutory damages, an amount equivalent to 50 times the Base Reference Value (BRV).
The legal dispute began when Mark Reese formally petitioned the Ministry of Justice upon discovering that his English translation of the classic novel Bygone Days (Ötkan Kunlar)—a monumental project that took him 15 years to complete—was being digitally distributed without his permission. Acting on his complaint, the Ministry of Justice launched an investigation at the university.
After verifying the intellectual property breach, ministry officials compiled an administrative offense report against the university administrator under Article 177¹ of the Code of Administrative Responsibility and forwarded the case to court. In that prior proceeding, the court fined the official 20.6 million soums and ordered the immediate removal of the pirated digital copy from the university's unilibrary.uz platform.
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