Nastic Gryzunova. Seine: issue 117

A few months ago, the Arbitrazhsudpravo law bureau, dearly loved by progressive humanity, issued a statement regarding the re-registration of domain names originally registered by the bureau. The statement claimed that registrants who took away from the poor unfortunate bureau one or more of the 1,300 domains it registered would be prosecuted by resourceful lawyers, not immediately, but after a couple of years, when these domains would be fully used for already promoted projects. The astonishing impudence of Arbitrazhsudprava in this statement reached its climax - and amazed the readers so much that no one really reacted to it. The text of the statement was once published on one of the bureau's websites, but has now disappeared to God knows where - the lawyers probably had a moment of enlightenment.

However, not even a few months had passed since the Law Office of Alexander Glushenkov published comments on the missing statement of Arbitration Court Rights. Even though the crazy cybersquatters seem to have died down (I hope not to jinx it), comments on their wild declaration of intent generally remain relevant. Below is a statement from the lawyers of the Bureau of Alexander Glushenkov - I quote with pleasure, since the world has been waiting for this for a long time.

Official statement from the bureau of Alexander Glushenkov regarding the dissemination by the Law Office of the MGCA "Arbitrazhsudpravo" of an official notice about the possible application of any measures to persons who registered domain names previously owned by "Arbitrazhsudpravo"

The scandal associated with the seizure of domains by employees of the MGCA Arbitrazhsudpravo law office has long subsided, and some of these domains have already found their new owners. But nevertheless, there is still a lot of uncertainty in this story, and it is especially unclear what will happen next? Will trials take place as Arbitrazhsudpravo plans? To clarify a number of issues regarding the legal side of the claims, we have decided to distribute our statement on this matter:

The law office of the MGCA "Arbitrazhsudpravo" has issued an official notice about the possible application of any measures to persons who registered domain names previously owned by "Arbitrazhsudpravo". We believe that such a document does not comply with the principles of legal ethics adopted in the Russian legal profession, and we consider it necessary to give an appropriate legal assessment. This statement expresses the official position of the Law Office of Alexander Glushenkov and is not associated with the position of the Russian Research Institute for the Development of Public Networks, which has the right to express its own opinion or leave the actions of Arbitrazhsudpravo without comment.

We believe that the actions of the Law Office of the Moscow State Arbitration Court “Arbitrationsudpravo” are a way of misleading bona fide Internet users, since all the claims of the author of this document are completely unfounded due to the following circumstances:

1. RosNIIROS carries out registration of domain names and all rights to use the domain name belong to the person registered in the database of second-level domain names in the .RU domain. A person, even who was previously in the database, does not have any rights to a domain that he lost and registered to a new person in the prescribed manner. Therefore, all statements by Arbitrazhsudpravo about their ownership of rights to any domain names are absolutely groundless.

2. The position allegedly justifying the demand for the “return of intercepted domains” in court is also untenable from a legal point of view, since the legislation of the Russian Federation does not provide for the possibility of returning allegedly “intercepted names” or, to put it more correctly, making claims to persons who registered their right. Since Arbitrazhsudpravo does not have any rights to domain names, there are no grounds for filing a lawsuit against these persons.

3. The author of the document replaced such concepts as “grounds of action” and “grounds for invalidating transactions.” As stated above, there are no grounds for filing a claim. There are also no grounds for declaring transactions invalid; the author himself does not provide any, for example: non-compliance of the transaction with the requirements of the law, execution of a transaction for a purpose contrary to the foundations of legal order and morality, completion of a transaction by persons incompetent or limited in legal capacity, or with excess of authority or legal a person who goes beyond the limits of his legal capacity, etc. That is, the author is simply scaring everyone with the consequences of something that, in principle, cannot happen, since Arbitration Court Law does not have any legal grounds for declaring transactions invalid.

4. A similar situation is with the statute of limitations, including for the application of the consequences of the invalidity of a void transaction - if there are no grounds for filing a claim and declaring the transaction invalid, then it doesn’t matter when specialists in the Arbitration Court decide to bring their claims without understanding the complete inconsistency your requirements.

5. The message about taking measures to initiate a criminal case under Article 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation indicates a lack of understanding by the author of the disposition of the act provided for in this article. It talks about unauthorized actions, and if Arbitration Court Law believes that persons applying for domain registration must ask for his consent, then another misconception appears here.

6. The application for permanent personal monitoring clearly violates the constitutional right to privacy. And in the event of any actions on the part of "Arbitration Court Law" in this direction, all interested parties can apply to the court for the protection of their constitutional rights.

Thus, all the arguments set out in the Arbitration Court Pravo notice do not have any legal basis and indicate either a lack of understanding of legal issues or deliberate misleading of bona fide domain name registrars. In addition, the abundant use of “quasi-legal” terminology and constant reminders of responsibility indicate the frivolity of legal elaboration and the desire to intimidate citizens who do not have special legal knowledge.