BI LINE’S RESPONSE TO CHALLENGES OF ARMENTEL
ArmInfo
2008-09-23 19:45:00
ArmInfo. Yesterday, on 22 September 2008 leadership of "Bi
Line" Ltd. and judicial firm "Harutyun and partners" called a
press-conference at which they criticized the fact that CJSC ArmenTel,
subsidiary of OJSC Vimpelcom used the brand "Beeline" at the territory
of Armenia as the name of its company, violating the rights of
"Bi Line" Ltd. The latter was established in 1996 and is one of the
leading information technologies company of Armenia. Its logotypes
were registered in 1997, long before international registration of
the logotypes of OJSC "Vimpelcom".
‘We also presented numerous examples of the court act of outrage which
accompanied the argument around the brands sounding like "biline". It
is absolutely clear that the court verdict on the basis of which
Vimpelcom and ArmenTel use the brand "beeline" at the territory of
Armenia is absolutely non-justice since it was made without involvement
of the "Bi Line" in the court process. Moreover, the above mentioned
verdict is based on absolutely unlearned ideas. It also fully ignores
the fact that there is already the name "Bi Line" and registration of
the same-name logotypes "Bo Line" in Russian and Armenian. The fact
that the court noticed no similarity between the brands "bi line"
and "bee line" of Vimpelcom and the name of "Bi Line" Ltd and the
logotypes "Bi Line", is simply an absurd. During a press-conference,
we pointed out other vivid judicial errors as well, including
ungrounded suspension of consideration of the claim of Bi Line Ltd,
non-application of a ban on using disputable trademarks until the
final decision of the court, judicial approval of anti-constitutional
out-of- court deprivation of intellectual property rights, maintenance
of vividly unjust decisions of the court in force, etc. For instance,
the law qualifies judicial decisions concerning the rights of persons,
who are not involved in the process, as an unconditional ground to
reconsider the case. However, this requirement of the law was openly
ignored by the court of appeal. This would have hardly been possible
if the court had been impartial and independent. All these violations
completely comply with the recent assessment of the Republic’s top
leadership that "to put it mildly, the quality of justice in our
country has a bad limp". Our press-conference was immediately followed
by the reaction of CJSC ArmenTel’s PR department.
Having neither grounds, nor arguments, nor proofs, the latter qualified
our speeches as containing unsubstantiated claims and as an attempt
to exert pressure on judicial bodies. At the same time CJSC ArmenTel
publicly called on the leadership of BI LINE company to refrain from
untimely statements before the final decision of the country and
not to aggravate tension around the proceedings. In this connection,
Bi Line Ltd:
1. welcomes that CJSC ArmenTel has finally recognized in public that
BI LINE COMPANY is Bi Line Ltd operating for over 12 years, and hopes
that in future CJSC ArmenTel will stop call itself as such;
2. shares the stance of CJSC ArmenTel as regards the inadmissibility
of exerting pressure on the court. However, it believes that CJSC
ArmenTel, first, confused the pressure on court with the public right
to be informed.
Second, groundlessly accusing Bi Line Ltd of exerting pressure on the
court it tries to conceal the real situation and shuffle the blame
on to the other;
3. fully supports the aspiration of CJSC ArmenTel to stay within
civilized discussion and advises it to refrain from using trademarks
that are read or sound like ‘bi line’ before the final decision of
the court of cassation and civil court on the cassation complaints
and claims of Bi Line Ltd, Bi Line company reports.