Forbes wins landmark cyber-squatting case

Forbes magazine's Russian edition said it won a cyber-squatting lawsuit against a company selling luxury cruises to Antarctica and was awarded $300,000 in damages, a record for the country.

The Moscow Arbitration Court ruled that Moscow-based Landmark VIP Services violated the magazine's trademark by using the Forbes.ru domain to lure potential customers, said Grigory Punanov, who runs Forbes's online edition, in a statement posted on Forbesrussia.ru

"The Forbes ruling is unusual because of the amount is unprecedented," said Viktor Naumov, an intellectual property specialist at the Salans law firm in St. Petersburg. "But I doubt it will change the problem with cyber-squatting."

Multinational companies including Starbucks Corp. and Burger King Holdings Inc. have faced lengthy disputes in Russia, where so-called squatters register .ru addresses in order to sell them to companies of the same name at exorbitant prices, Naumov said. While litigation has increased, few plaintiffs have won financial compensation, he said.

"We have fought for a long time," Punanov said. "We hope the ruling will go into effect soon and our site will be available at Forbes.ru."

Landmark VIP President Yury Galustov declined to comment on the ruling and nobody at the Moscow Arbitration Court's press service could be reached for comment today. Forbes Russia is published by Germnay's Axel Springer AG.