MOSCOW, July 1 (RAPSI) - The Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals has charged SnabService company and bolshoi.me site administrator Andrei Khartanyuk 5 million rubles ($152,863) in a suit filed by the Bolshoi Theater, prohibiting the use of the Bolshoi brand name on the site and in the domain name, the court's representative told RAPSI on Monday.

The court altered the ruling by the Moscow Commercial Court, which on April 4 satisfied the theater's claim on reducing the recovery sum from 5 million to 210,000 rubles ($6,420). In its lawsuit, the theater requested prohibiting the illegal use of its brand names and charging 10,000 rubles ($306) from Khartanyuk and 4.99 million rubles ($152,557) from SnabService.

The claimant, which is the owner of the Bolshoi Theater and Bolshoi series of brand names, had found that the bolshoi.me website was offering tickets for theater performances for sale online, with the use of the theater logo. The site also contained information on SnabService, the company selling tickets. The claimant had not granted the defendants any right to use its products.

The court ruled that the trademarks and the domain name bolshoi.me are confusingly similar. The site name and its contents were used by the defendants for selling theater tickets, that is, in the same field of activity as that of the trademark owner. 

The launching of the site with a domain name that includes a name identical to the claimant's trademark represents an illegal use of the trademark, the court ruled.