The British encroached on the "Classmates"
It turns out that Albert Popkov did the Odnoklassniki project not entirely on his own initiative. He began to make it, in fact, commissioned by his employer, the British company i-CD Publishing. At least, she claims that, and now she has sued London for her former employee. The British are demanding that they return the domain name, the software and all the revenues that Popkov received from the project.
Just an amazing story.
It turns out that Albert Popkov was a simple freelancer and did not even think about creating a social network. Since February 1999, he has been fulfilling one-time orders for i-CD Publishing, and in 2000 they took him to the state as a programmer, where he worked until 2006. The management charged Popkov with a responsible project: to study the Russian social networking market, register a domain name and collect a database of schools to create the Russian version of the social network Passado (this is an affiliate company with i-CD - a social network for meeting former classmates).
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In 2002, while still on the staff of the company, Popkov secretly registered an Odnoklassniki.ru domain name from an employer and acquired a trademark of the same name. Under an employment contract, he had no right to engage in business that competes with the activities of the employer.
The former employer has all the documents on hand in support of the above facts.
To justify himself, Popkov can only say that he “wrote with his own hands, launched the first site of Odnoklassniki, launched it and, up to a certain stage, launched it almost alone." In addition, he didn’t have a direct contract with Passado (I-CD only).
If you look at things objectively, it is difficult to imagine that the court will side with the Russian programmer, albeit a very talented one. But even if there is a court decision, some people in the government leadership may view Odnoklassniki as Russia's national wealth (there is information about Putin ’s position on such issues ) and if Google isn’t allowed to enter Russia, defending national interests, then Odnoklassniki surely no one will give up.
Just an amazing story.
It turns out that Albert Popkov was a simple freelancer and did not even think about creating a social network. Since February 1999, he has been fulfilling one-time orders for i-CD Publishing, and in 2000 they took him to the state as a programmer, where he worked until 2006. The management charged Popkov with a responsible project: to study the Russian social networking market, register a domain name and collect a database of schools to create the Russian version of the social network Passado (this is an affiliate company with i-CD - a social network for meeting former classmates).
')
In 2002, while still on the staff of the company, Popkov secretly registered an Odnoklassniki.ru domain name from an employer and acquired a trademark of the same name. Under an employment contract, he had no right to engage in business that competes with the activities of the employer.
The former employer has all the documents on hand in support of the above facts.
To justify himself, Popkov can only say that he “wrote with his own hands, launched the first site of Odnoklassniki, launched it and, up to a certain stage, launched it almost alone." In addition, he didn’t have a direct contract with Passado (I-CD only).
If you look at things objectively, it is difficult to imagine that the court will side with the Russian programmer, albeit a very talented one. But even if there is a court decision, some people in the government leadership may view Odnoklassniki as Russia's national wealth (there is information about Putin ’s position on such issues ) and if Google isn’t allowed to enter Russia, defending national interests, then Odnoklassniki surely no one will give up.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/46064/
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