Google files complaint vs antitrust case to Russian supreme crt

MOSCOW, Jan 25 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Supreme Court registered on Tuesday a cassation appeal of Google under a case against legitimacy of a decision and a warrant of the local antitrust authority, which found it guilty of abusing dominance on the market of mobile applications, according to the court’s documents seen by PRIME on Wednesday.

The higher court has made no procedural decisions yet.

Google filed the complaint against the decision of the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District, which cancelled a transfer of the main dispute between the U.S. company and the Federal Antimonopoly Service to the Intellectual Property Court.

In December 2016, the district court sided with cassation appeals of the antitrust authority and local Internet giant Yandex, the initiator of the antimonopoly proceedings and a third party in the case, which asked the court to keep the suit and consider it.

The antimonopoly service said then the dispute referred only to Google’s abuse of its dominant position on the local market of preinstalled application stores on Android devices and had nothing to do with rights on the company’s intellectual property.

The antimonopoly service wants Google to fix violations, which includes forcing smartphone manufacturers to preinstall Google Play in a tie-up with the company’s other applications.

The authority brought the company to administrative responsibility and imposed a 438 million ruble fine. Google challenged the fine.

(59.2168 rubles – U.S. $1)

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