Statement from Go Ogle (google.ua)

On October 5, 2010, the Supreme Commercial Court of Ukraine partially upheld the cassation appeal of Go Ogle LLC regarding the cancellation of the google.ua domain name registration. By its ruling, the court amended the decision of the Kyiv Commercial Court of February 3, 2009, overturning paragraph 3 of that decision, which required Hostmaster LLC, as the administrator of the .UA domain zone, to cancel the delegation of the google.ua domain name to Go Ogle LLC.

Thus, the Supreme Commercial Court of Ukraine confirmed that the delegation of a domain name in the .UA domain zone may be cancelled at the request of the registrant.

Reference

According to the current .UA Domain Rules, domain names in this domain zone are delegated to the owners of the rights to the corresponding trademarks (word marks for goods and services), as well as trademarks registered under the Madrid System. Therefore, to register a domain in the .UA zone, a Certificate of Ukraine for a trademark for goods and services, issued by the authorized state body (the State Patent Office), is required.

According to Mykhailo Aratosov, a representative of Go Ogle, "the dispute initiated by the American corporation Google Inc. has returned to the legal framework and now concerns not the legality of the google.ua domain registration, but the Go Ogle trademark under which this domain is registered. The Supreme Commercial Court of Ukraine prevented the American corporation from disrupting the decade-old and well-established system of registering national domains."

"In Ukraine today, there is a clear and understandable algorithm for how a legal trademark owner can obtain a second-level domain in the .UA zone. And under this framework, Google Inc. cannot legally obtain a domain," asserts a Go Ogle representative.

The legal battle between Google Inc. and GoOgle has been ongoing since 2008. That's when Google Inc. first filed a lawsuit seeking to prohibit GoOgle from using the American company's trademark.

However, due to erroneous legal proceedings initiated against the previous owner of the trademark, at the end of 2008, Google Inc. filed a new lawsuit against GoOgle with the same demands, now basing them on the fact that the American corporation does not have a trademark, but a trade name, which, in its opinion, is used by the Ukrainian company.

Following a February 2009 hearing, the Kyiv Commercial Court deemed the delegation of the google.ua domain to Go Ogle illegal and ordered Hostmaster to cancel the delegation of the google.ua domain name. This decision has now been overturned by the Supreme Commercial Court of Ukraine.

Go Ogle was founded in 2007 and specializes in information technology, specifically social services. The company is owned by British investors.