Maxim Ali has commented on the Supreme Court ruling on interim measures in the domain dispute

The right holder of the trademark “Lunda” has reached the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in an attempt to obtain the imposition of interim measures against a competitor that used the protected designation in the domain names “lunda.rf” and “lunda.su” in the same market. In particular, the plaintiff demanded to prohibit the opponent to waive the right to administer the disputed domain names and transfer this right, and the registrar – to cancel the domain names and transfer the right to their administration to others. In the complaint to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, there was an additional emphasis on the bad faith of the offender, according to the Arbitration Cases Files, which has been repeatedly prosecuted for violating the exclusive rights of others in similar cases.

As a result of the consideration of the case the Supreme Court overturned the decisions of the lower courts and sent the case for reconsideration. The court citied on paragraph 160 of the Resolution of the Plenum of the Cupreme Court of April 23, 2019 № 10 on the possibility of applying interim measures aimed at maintaining the existing state of relations between the parties to prevent the infliction of significant damage to the applicant.

From the point of view of Senior associate, Head of IP/PT practice at Maxima Legal Maxim Ali, given the generally deplorable situation with interim measures, any ruling of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in favor of their adoption should be assessed positively. “However, we cannot say that it was impossible to obtain similar measures before. There are examples when courts of first two instances and the Court for Intellectual Property Rights prohibited to transfer administration of disputed domain in the framework of interim measures”, commented the expert for the Advokatskaya Gazeta newspaper, specifying that refusal of courts in this case could be connected as with general tendency not to accept interim measures as well as with specific composition of evidence presented by the claimant.

According to Maxim Ali, in contentious situations, the courts should be more inclined to take interim measures if they prima facie see the corpus delicti. “It is very easy to transfer the right to administrate a domain name. And the offender can abuse it by transferring the domain to new and new people. In this case, rarely defendants are in a situation where the ban on the domain name will cause substantial losses “, explained Maxim.

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