Moscow Arbitration Court issues unexpected decision in domain name case

The Moscow Arbitration Court has dismissed an infringement action filed by OSRAM GmbH, the owner of the international mark LEDVANCE, regarding the domain name 'ledvance.ru' because the limitation period had expired. Surprisingly, the court found that OSRAM should have searched the directory of '.ru' domain names between December 2010 and December 2013 and that, by not filing an infringement action within that period, it had lost the right to seek protection in court.