Wrong Geox

The Moscow Arbitration Court on Thursday found businessman Dmitry Sevyan's registration of the geox.ru domain a violation of the rights of Italian footwear company Geox SpA to trademarks and trade name, the RAPSI said in court.

The court also found it illegal to use the geox name on Sevyana’s website to advertise products and forbade the entrepreneur from using this name in the domain name in relation to products covered by the Geox SpA brand

At the same time, the court refused to collect 100 thousand rubles from Sevyan, and the requirements to the registrar of Regional Network Information Center JSC (RSIC) were also rejected.

After the meeting, commenting on the RAPSI's decision, Sevyan did not rule out that he would appeal the decision. “First we will contact Geox,” he said.

A lawyer from Geox SpA said in court that the violation was associated "not only with the formal design of the site, but also with the parallel sale of goods in respect of which trademarks were registered." The plaintiff fears that the Russian consumer may be misled, since the GEOX brand is widely known and the buyer may assume that the site belongs to the company. According to the plaintiff, this situation also complicates the registration of a similar domain by the firm itself.

However, Dmitry Sevyan does not agree with the stated requirements and believes that "there is no dispute." He said that in 2005 he entered into an agreement for the exclusive distribution of GEOX products to Russia. The controversial domain, he said, was purchased and registered with the knowledge of the Italian company, and even an agreement was prepared to transfer this domain to GEOX. Sevian said that he has opened more than 60 GEOX stores across the country.

However, in 2009, the shoe company proposed a new exclusive distribution agreement, with worsening conditions. After this, the cooperation of the parties ceased, Sevyan suggested transferring the GEOX website and stores in exchange for cost recovery. According to the entrepreneur, the company did not contact him for this, however, Sevyan refused to sell the domain to other people, although he received a number of offers.

The businessman said that now on the site geox.ru offered the remnants of goods that were delivered under the distribution agreement. Sevyan is now ready to transfer his domain to GEOX if she addresses him with such an offer.

On Thursday, Sevyan wanted to transfer to the court correspondence with the management of Geox to prove his words. But Judge Elena Khailo, could not attach the documents to the case, as they were in a foreign language, and the defendant did not translate the letters.

The Italian company had previously asked the court as a security measure to ban Sevyana from transferring the right to administer the geox.ru domain to persons other than Geox SpA, as well as transferring the domain name to another registrar, fearing that the domain would be transferred to other persons. However, Judge Elena Hailo refused this, as she considered the position of Geox SpA insufficiently reasoned and based on assumptions.

Currently, the GEOX Respira inscription is on the geox.ru website and shoes for sale are made by an Italian company, retailer.ru writes.

Geox was founded at the beginning of the 90 of the last century; since 2004, its shares have been traded on the Italian stock exchange. The company is engaged in the creation, production and marketing of men's, women's and children's clothes and shoes around the world, using Italian traditions and ideas about style as a starting point.