WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center in Swiss Geneva has made a decision on the complaint of Navitel – Russian manufacturer of navigation systems. The company applied for domain names NAVITEL.MOSCOW and НАВИТЕЛ.МОСКВА that were registered in Russia in December 2014. This case is the first domain dispute in .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА that got to WIPO and was dealt with according to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.
The complaint was filed by Navitel way back on December 29, 2014. However, according to Anton Sergo, the lawyer who represents the plaintiff, the hearing of the case was so delayed because all parties concerned were discussing several important issues, for example, the problems of the applicable language and the formation of a competent bilingual board of arbitrators. The defendant didn’t want to seek compromise with Navitel, only refused to transfer the disputed domain names.
As a result a board of arbitrators have established that it was cybersquatting. WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center has ruled that domain NAVITEL.MOSCOW and НАВИТЕЛ.МОСКВА have to be transferred to Navitel in a 10-day period.
Sergey Kopylov, deputy director at Coordination Center to TLD RU/РФ, believes that this dispute is very interesting if we consider the relation between ICANN’s rules for domain dispute resolution in new gTLDs and national legislation: “In this case a Russian legal entity that operates under Russian jurisdiction against the will of the administrator (its client) has to transfer domain names to another administrator according to the decision made by the Arbitration Board in Geneva. From the point of view of Russian legislation this could be treated as unjustified refusal to continue the services to another client. This approach gives him the right to appeal to a Russian court for payment of damages.”
