Russian domain expropriated by foreign "name owner"

[companyone]

One of Moscow's city courts satisfied a non-resident company's claim for its right for a domain name in .RU which spells the same as the company's name. We know many cases when domain names were legally returned to the trademark owners, but this is the first story about the plain word name. Anton Sergo, the head of Moscow lawyer company "Internet and Law" who shared this information, didn't disclose the name of the company. "But you can imagine the company called, for instance, Dandelion Inc, which now can legally grab the domain name Dandelion.ru from its owner", the lawyer explained. He admits this case can start a whole new revision of Russian domain market, although formally Russian law-court system does not support precedent model. Besides, the new edition of Civil Code part IV prohibits the registration of trademarks similar to the domain names already registered - but this law comes into force in Jan 2008 only.

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