A decision of the Arbitration Court of Moscow under the claim of OOO «Information agency «Banki.ru» (owns information portal Banki.ru, etc.) at the suit of a citizen of Belarus the webpages of which used designations similar to the trademark of the information agency came into force. Belarus citizen owns two domains in .RU and .PRO domain zones.
It is no secret that domain registration on foreigners makes protection of trademarks much more difficult. In this case the key topic of the dispute was the applicability of the Russian law and competence of the Russian court to consider such dispute. Such disputes are rare and usually refer to domain names, not the designations used on the webpages.
The legal position of the plaintiff, which was defended by Anton Sergo from “Internet and Law” law firm, was that the rights of the Russian trademark owner should be defended by the Russian court in any case, no matter where the owner of the domain resides. Moreover, in this case the defendant webpages were targeting citizens of Russia.
When considering the case, Arbitration court of Moscow agreed with these arguments and satisfied the claim in full, it also surcharged 100.000 rubles from the offender. The Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal considered the appeal of the defendant last week and upheld the judgment.
