Members of the public posed for photographs with various types of the Kalashnikov rifle at the stand of the Izmash factory at the Russian Arms Expo 2004 in Urals' city of Nizhny Tagil as a portrait of Kalashnikov himself looked on.
IZHEVSK, Russia, July 24 - The bazaar in this industrial city shows why Western companies regard Russia as a land of piracy.
Bootlegged copies of new American movies - "King Arthur,'' "Troy'' and "Spider-Man 2'' - sell for $3. Photoshop 8.0, a $600 program in Western stores, fetches $2.75.
Markets like this, found throughout Russia, have been a longstanding subject of diplomatic complaint. Washington contends Russian intellectual-property pirates cost the United States more than $1 billion a year.
Now Russia is striking back. A Russian industry and product designer are asserting that the United States has been abetting intellectual-property pirates to suit its own needs, by directing copies of Russian merchandise around the world.
The complaint is not about software or music. It makes no mention of movies or video games. It is about the Kalashnikov assault rifle, the most prolific firearm ever made.
"We see a great number of products which are named after Kalashnikov, my name,'' said Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, the weapon's original designer. "They are buying Kalashnikovs from other countries,'' he added.
Since the collapses of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's army in Iraq, the United States has been purchasing or arranging the transfer of thousands of knockoffs of Kalashnikovs commonly referred to as AK-47's, to outfit new military and security forces in Kabul and Baghdad.
These rifles have not been made in Russia, where the arms industry holds patents for the weapon in several nations. Instead they have originated in weapons plants controlled by Eastern European states, each of which was a partner of Moscow's in Soviet days.
So begins an argument at once curious, impassioned and bizarre, involving the legacy of cold war influence jockeying, secretive arms deals, recent efforts to defeat modern Islamic insurgencies, and international business and patent law.
The automatic Kalashnikov, made in a factory here, is in many ways Moscow's Ford. It is a quintessential national product: extraordinarily successful, widespread, a name closely connected to the identity of a state.
Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, designer of the most prolific weapon in the world, the Kalashnikov assault rifle, at his dacha in the forest outside the Russian industrial city of Izhevsk. The world market for Kalashnikov's assualt rifles is flooded with imitations made by former Soviet allies and states.
It was designed by Mr. Kalashnikov, a former Russian tank sergeant, in classified Soviet weapons trials shortly after World War II, and was promptly embraced by Soviet soldiers for its simplicity and reliability under almost any condition. It is regarded as a weapon that rarely, if ever, fails.
Russian arms officials say that no other nation has a valid license to make the AK-47 and its many derivatives and clones, and that to defeat insurgents and terrorists, Washington has been encouraging violations of intellectual property rights. Russia is suffering losses in income, jobs and damage to the Kalashnikov name, the officials say, and would like the United States to shop for the weapons directly from here.
"We would like to inform everybody in the world that many countries, including the United States, have unfortunately violated recognized norms," said Igor Sevastyanov, who leads a division of Rosoboronexport, Russia's state-controlled arms export company. American officials confirm that non-Russian Kalashnikov rifles have been provided with American assistance to Afghanistan and Iraq. Sometimes the weapons have been transferred via purchases on international arms markets, they say, other times via the solicitation of donations from friendly states as a gesture of cooperation with the Bush administration's war and reconstruction efforts.
The officials also say that they are aware of the Russian complaints, which raise questions of provenance that remain unresolved.
"We have taken the position that there are important issues with respect to the production, intellectual property rights and conditions of export of these weapons, and it is important that we strengthen controls in all of these areas," a State Department official said . Officials from Rosoboronexport and Izhmash, the Russian company holding patents on the rifle, say American-coordinated transfers include Kalashnikov clones made in Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian plants that have continued to be sold despite Russian complaints.
Another transfer, arranged by the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq last year, involved the purchase of Kalashnikovs from Jordan. The weapons were believed to be excess stock from the Jordanian army, and to have been manufactured years ago by the former East Germany, another State Department official said.
The transfers have been diplomatically delicate; the Jordanian deal drew complaints from across the political spectrum.
American business representatives have said that American-made rifles should be bought to preserve American jobs. Others questioned the wisdom of shipping more automatic rifles to countries already awash in such guns.
Congressman have asked why American forces did not save money by reissuing to friendly forces the thousands of Kalashnikov rifles confiscated in both wars.
(Last spring, journalists from The New York Times watched United States marines collect tens of thousands of mint-condition Kalashnikovs in cache in a hospital in Tikrit. The weapons were still in their original packing crates.)
In spite of complaints, the transfers continued, American officials say, in part because the automatic Kalashnikov is inexpensive and requires less training to master than modern American rifles. Several officials noted that many young Iraqi and Afghan men already know how to use it.
Izhmash and Rosoboronexport agree with this position; their officials are even proud the Pentagon prefers the Kalashnikov for its new allies.
But they say Washington's deals have come at the expense of Izhmash and Izhevsk, where mass production of the rifles began in 1949, and where orders and the work force have shrunk since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.
More than 12,000 people worked on the gun lines then; roughly 7,000 work there today, and at fewer shifts, said Andrei Vishnyakov, an Izhmash official.
The officials noted that the low price of Kalashnikov knockoffs can make it impossible to sell the genuine item, a phenomenon resembling the underselling of software and DVD's, albeit on a different scale.
For example, the Jordanian rifles sold for about $60 each - less than one-fourth of the price of a new Kalashnikov from the Izhmash plant, according to Rosoboronexport data.
"They are selling these rifles at dump prices," said Alexander G. Likhachev, a former Izhmash director who is now an official with the state arms agency.
He added that Russia wants this business. "We are prepared to manufacture the genuine weapons, in big quantities, because we know there is a demand," he said.
The legal standing of Rosoboronexport's complaint is uncertain. American officials, analysts and trade representatives said issues surrounding each transfer would require intensive legal research to resolve.
The task would be daunting. In the 1950's, in a mix of collaborative revolutionary spirit and jockeying against the West, the Soviet Union began exporting the rifles and the technology to manufacture them to states in its sphere of influence. Ultimately, Moscow entered licensing agreements with 18 states, according to Rosoboronexport.
"We transferred and gave them all the technical documentation, all the know-how about the design," Mr. Kalashnikov, now 84, said in an interview at his dacha in the Russian woods. "Representatives of these countries came here. They studied our production line."
Moreover, once the rifle's utility became well known, another 11 countries began making derivatives and clones without Moscow's approval, the state agency said.
Russia says that all former licenses have expired. But to make this case the old licenses would have to be studied, as would Izhmash's more recently acquired patents and intellectual property laws in each Kalashnikov-manufacturing state.
A third American official said several former Soviet-bloc countries, which formerly made Kalashnikovs with Moscow's approval, contend they retain rights to the weapon today. "There is a dispute among all the parties involved," the official said.
Still, whatever the legal merits, analysts agree: the complaint's symbolic power is great.
"I'm not a big fan of guns, but that said, if the creators of this intellectual property have rights to enforce, I really do hope they can get them enforced in every country," Eric Schwartz, a vice president of the International Intellectual Property Alliance, said in a telephone interview. "And I hope that the United States government would comply and set a good example."
The alliance represents American companies with products protected by copyright laws.
The complaint also faces the unrelenting realities of the market. After decades in production in plants in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, the automatic Kalashnikov has spread far beyond Izhevsk's reach..
Analysts estimate that 70 million to and 105 million of the weapons have been made.
It has been used not only by more than 55 state armies, but by the Viet Cong, militias in Beirut, Palestinian insurgents in Gaza City, guerrillas in Iraq, and child soldiers in Asian and African states. A Kalashnikov is on the seal of Hezbollah and the flag of Mozambique. It features prominently in the symbolism of jihad.
Even the United States long ago entered in the Kalashnikov business, in the 1980's, when it surreptitiously bought Chinese and Egyptian Kalashnikovs for Islamic guerrillas battling the Red Army in Afghanistan.
American purchases of Kalashnikovs have continued intermittently since then. A few years ago, according to officials at the State Department and the Pentagon, Washington purchased Kalashnikovs for a Nigerian peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone.
With so many of the weapons in circulation, one analyst said Russia's complaint could prove to be an almost impossible fight.
Rosoboronexport's position is like "the Chinese saying they have a royalty right on every firearm, because that's where it all started with the invention of gunpowder 700 years ago," said Dr. Aaron Karp, a professor at Old Dominion University who specializes in weapon proliferation issues.
Mr. Kalashnikov, who said the Russian versions of his rifle are superior, and who expressed deep fondness to Russian workers who have long made them, recognized the difficulties in the state agency's complaint.
He remembered that years ago President Boris N. Yeltsin vowed to defend the weapon from market infringement, to no avail. "President Yeltsin said he would do everything," Mr. Kalashnikov said. "But it's not so easy."
