In May the court of Moscow considered a case of a foreign trade mark owner against a Russian domain. The point was that the name of the site was very close to the name of the trade mark, the owner of which demanded the site to be given to him. The court met the claim and the domain name passed to the plaintiff.
      
      Surely, this precedent arose much noise, as if a name of a site sounds similar to a trade mark name (e.g. Softnurg Ltd. may appropriate softnurg.ru), one may be deprived of a domain name judicially.
      
      The Russian legislation doesn’t provide for the precedent occurred, that is why any person can register a firm under a particular name within 5 days and sue all the sites with similar names.
      
      The amendments to the Civil Code will come into force in January 2008. The law will prohibit registering a trade mark, if there is a similar domain name.
      
      sources:
      www.webplanet.ru
      www.klerk.ru