MOSCOW, May 16 - RAPSI. A controlling stockholder of Yandex, Russia's biggest Internet search engine, has filed a petition with the United States District Court for the Northern Districtof California to dismiss a lawsuit claiming Yandex's breach of intellectual property rights.

Perfect 10, an American erotic photo publisher, and the owner of an adult site, filed a motion against Yandex in late March for the violation of copyright law. Perfect 10 maintains that registered Yandex N.V domain names yandex.com, yandex.ru, yandex.st, yandex.net publish pictures belonging to Perfect 10's core business.

The defendant, however, claims to dismiss the motion on the grounds that this Court lacks personal jurisdiction over Yandex. The defendant also attached a motion filed by Yandex N.V. board member Yelena Ivaschentseva in support of Yandex's petition. She holds that Yandex N.V. was founded in the Netherlands and has no assets or businesses in California, the USA.

However, the file mentions among the defendant's daughter companies Yandex Inc., which is registered in Delaware, USA , and Russian-based Yandex LLC. The latter has allegedly done some business in the United States in the past, but transferred its business to Yandex Inc. several years ago.

The Yandex group maintains it yields less than 0.4 percent of its total annual revenue from its the United States business. In this regard, the defendant considers the case in the California court unjustified. Besides, any decision passed by the U.S. court will contradict Dutch and Russian laws, Ivaschentseva said.

Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan legal firm, which represents the Yandex group, also maintains that the plaintiff's claims for bans are unfounded. It also stressed that Perfect 10 has been widely involved in copyright litigations for the last ten years and should be considered "a copyright troll". The pornography publisher has reportedly filed nearly 30 claims against 40 companies, accusing them of inflicting serious damage to its business.

Yandex Russia confirmed the filing of the petition to the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI) but declined further comments.

RAPSI has yet to obtain comments from Perfect 10.

Yandex is the biggest web company in Russia. Its net profit jumped 53 percent in the first quarter of 2012 to 1.258 billion rubles ($41.4 million) year on year using US GAAP.