The case concerning Nordic Nutrition's claim has been finished at the Moscow Arbitration Court. Nordic Nutrition is a Russian company that took over the market from a Finnish business that had retired but was well-known to Russian consumers. The Russian company changed its name to Nordic Nutrition in 2022 and obtained the rights to the NORDIC trademark, and then filed a lawsuit against the nordic.ru administrator, registered back in 2004.
According to Anton Sergo, representing the administrator of the domain (Internet and Law), the plaintiff demanded from the administrator not only the domain, but also 5 million rubles in compensation, almost 100,000 rubles of court fees, and another 500,000 rubles for conducting sociological and linguistic research on fame brand NORDIC (by the way, not related to the essence of such disputes).
As a result, the claim was denied. Anton Sergo says, the age of the domain, its fair use and its own trademark played a decisive role.
According to the lawyer, similar decisions, but sometimes even with lesser protection tools, were taken in cases regarding the domains guba.ru, domovoy.ru, omatras.ru, davay.ru and others.
Anton Sergo spoke about the trend of support by Russian courts of bona fide administrators of domestic domains, set by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation back in 2019, in his speech at the Domain Section, organized by the Coordination Center for .RU/.РФ at RIF2023. This topic will also be raised at 16-th International Conference of Administrators and Registrars of ccTLDs of the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe (TLDCON 2023) at the legal section, which will be attended by well-known industry lawyers.
