The Moscow Commercial Court has issued a ruling in a lawsuit brought by Russian Standard Vodka, a well-known alcohol producer, against companies Tevron Ltd and the Regional Network Information Center over the use of the domain names Davay.ru and Davai.ru. Tevron is the administrator of these domains, yet Russian Standard owns the trademarks DAVAI and ДАВАЙ.
According to Internet & Law CEO Anton Sergo, who is representing the defendant’s interests, the court is reviewing the domain administrator’s activity based on three arguments. First, the law prohibits the use of similar marks without consent of the trademark owner if they could result in confusion. However, the case of Russian Standard and Tevron Ltd concerns neither uniformity nor confusion. Second, the domain names davai.ru and davay.ru were registered in 2005. The plaintiff got ownership of the trademarks only in 2012-2013. Finally, the defendant does not use the plaintiff’s trademarks but rather the widely used word “Davai!” (“Come on!”), which was commonly heard long before the Russian Standard Vodka company came along.
Taking into account these arguments, the Moscow Commercial Court completely rejected the claim. “We can see from the current legal practice that the defendant’s actions are legal (Article 1252 paragraph 6 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation) and that there are no grounds to uphold the lawsuit. In the majority of cases, courts qualify such activity by the plaintiff as ‘abuse of rights’ under Article 10 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation,” Anton Sergo said about the ruling.
