The trade mark BURGER KING was registered by the eponymous ‘restaurant’ chain in 1994 in Russia. 

Very surprisingly Burger King have not yet opened a ‘restaurant’ in Russia, and had been planning to do so in December of last year.

Unfortunately, the domain name burgerking.ru is owned by a Scandinavian company, who bought it in 2000.  Burger King Corporation filed a lawsuit against Talco Aktiengesellschaft (Netherlands) and Elvis-Telecom, the owners.

This problem has allegedly delayed the opening of the ‘restaurant’ chain in Russia.

Despite the law being firmly on Burger King’s side, as Part 4 of the Russian Civil Code allows for domain names to be claimed exclusively by trade mark owners, with damages, the cybersquatters were trying to get BK to buy the domain name from them.

Tim Mount is a legal executive at trademarkroom, contactable at tim@trademarkroom.com