MOSCOW, March 7 - RAPSI. The Moscow Commercial Court postponed until April 19 its hearing of the $254.6 million lawsuit against the Astrel publishing house.

Terra publishing house sued Astrel, a part of the AST publishing company, for allegedly illegally publishing the late Russian sci-fi writer Alexander Belyayev's novels.

Founded in 1990, AST is one of the largest publishing companies in Russia. It accounts for 20 percent of the Russian book market, according to its website. AST publishes over 800 new books monthly.

Terra filed a lawsuit in August 2009. It claimed to own the rights for the popular works of Belyayev.

Meanwhile, Astrel stated that the copyright protection term has expired and it legally published the novels.

The Moscow Commercial Court held in favor of the plaintiff's claims in full, having obligated the defendant to stop distributing the books in dispute and pay $237.34 million in damages. The appeals court dismissed the decision regarding the compensation, but upheld the prohibition to distribute the books. The cassation court dismissed Terra's claims in full.

The case reached the Supreme Commercial Court which remanded it in October.