MOSCOW, September 9 (RAPSI) – The Moscow Region Commercial Court has ruled in favor of Finnish dairy producer Valio to ban writer Dmitry Lipskerov from using the Valio brand in his valio.ru domain name, RAPSI learned in court on Tuesday.

At the same time, the court dismissed the Finnish company’s damages request to fine Lipskerov 100,000 rubles ($2,695) for using the said brand name, because the plaintiff has withdrawn it.

The Finnish company said in its lawsuit that it is the exclusive rights holder for the Valio brand names. Valio said it learned about the registration of the valio.ru domain name while conducting economic operation in Russia. On April 30, the Regional Network Information Center (registrar) notified the plaintiff that the domain name’s administrator was Dmitry Lipskerov.

The Finnish company’s website in Russia is valiorussia.ru.

On August 12, a search was conducted at the Valio facilities in St. Petersburg as part of a 45-million-ruble ($1.2 million) banking case, official Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said. “The purpose of the search was to uncover new evidence against defendants in a criminal case and was not related to Valio’s business practices,” he noted.

“The investigation in this case found that a criminal group was involved in illegal banking activity in a number of Russian regions in 2011-2013 that eventually took in over 45 million rubles ($1.2 million). It has been revealed that members of the criminal group transferred funds to the accounts of over 20 legal entities, including the Valio offices in St. Petersburg, that were disguised as legal banking transactions,” Markin said.

Valio’s products were recently banned in Russia after the Kremlin imposed a one-year ban on agricultural and food imports from several countries in response to sanctions against Russia. The countries include the US, the EU, Canada, Australia and Norway. The ban includes beef, pork, poultry, fruit, vegetables, cheese, dairy, nuts and other products.

Valio announced that it would continue production in Russia and the restrictions would only affect the production lines in Finland that are focused on the Russian market.