iPhone. News and Tips

Everybody was so excited about iPhones coming to Russia that an important detail was left without attention, but that detail can move iPhone’s release in Russia by more than one month.
The iPhone trademark on the Russia’s territory belongs to another company!

A year before I wrote about this story:

On the 29th of June 2007 Apple released iPhone. The same day in Russia “MD Trading” has registered the iPhone trademark. In the list of the countries, where the iPhone trademark is secured, one could not find Russia. Many countries of ex-USSR were on the list, but not Russia. Accordingly to Baker & McKenzie’s Vladimir Shitikov, “possibly, they forgot about registering in Russia, too, or mistook Ru (Russia) for Ro (Romania). This mistake can cost Apple a fortune, since they are sure that their brand is secured in Russia.”

“MD Trading” can sue Apple or offer the american company a deal. With the probability of 99% the latter will happen/

BTW, do you want to know yet another aspect? The iphone.ru domain was registered in 1997 by the “Galioptic” company, and was bought in 2008 by the company Global Event. This was made in pursuit for money. The administrator of the domain is Sergej Savabin (on the photo), he is also the GE director.

If Apple will get its trademark back, the domain will be returned with great possibility. However, it will take a long time. That’s why the company will prefer to buy the trademark out, as it happened in July 2007 with Google, who had to buy the youtube.ru domain through a ficitional KSS Associates company from my fellow cyber-squatter – for a plenty of bucks.