MOSCOW, April 18 - RAPSI. The Russian Network Information Center (Ru-Center) has appealed the court judgment upholding the antimonopoly watchdog's resolution that it violated the antitrust law when registering .rf domains.

The Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals ruled in March that the watchdog's ruling on Ru-Center was legal at the time of its pronouncement. However, in cases where the law has since been amended, reducing the liability for the offense, the new law must take effect.

In this regard, the court has dropped the charges of collusion previously brought against Ru-Center. The court stated that in December 2011 the law on competition was amended and these actions are no longer considered an offense.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service found Ru-Center guilty of unfair competition and collusion with five other companies, which resulted in the division of the market registering .rf domains. The service also ordered the registrar to return 239.36 million rubles ($8.14 million) to the budget.

The watchdog found that in the first 12 hours of registration over 115,450 domain names were registered for the six companies involved in the collusion, with 70,914 registered by Ru-Center.

The income received from closed bids on .rf domains at Ru-Center amounted to 239.36 million rubles ($8.14 million).

The Moscow Commercial Court upheld Ru-Center's lawsuit last November, thus dismissing the service's decision. However, the appeals court held the applicant liable for antitrust charges. The Moscow Commercial Court's judicial act was subsequently dismissed, and the appeals court began reconsidering the dispute under the first-instance court's rules.

Ru-Center is one of the largest domain registrars in Russia. It serves 2 million domain names.