Russian court rejects slander suit filed by the SaleNames against Izvestia over Firefox brand
A slander lawsuit filed by the SaleNames domain registrar against Russian news daily Izvestia challenging a story describing a dispute over the Firefox brand was rejected.
The the SaleNames domain registrar sought a redaction of the headline, “Russian Squatters Attack Firefox Again,” as well as the first paragraph of the story. During the hearing, it became known that SaleNames has registered the domain name firefox.ru and applied to register the Firefox trademark in Russia. The same facts were described in the story.
The plaintiff argued that the word “squatter” carried a derogatory connotation, whereas the company was acting lawfully and had applied to register the brand in via a different class of goods from that used by the Mozilla Foundation, which is the owner of the internationally renowned Firefox trademark.
The lawyer added, that SaleNames lost several clients after Izvestia published the story.
Meanwhile, Izvestia’s attorney said the article was based on court statements. She claimed that SaleNames has been involved in several disputes with brand owners before, adding that the term “cybersquatting” does not necessarily imply illegal activity.
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