Estonia News Archives
December 27, 2011
Estonia Reduces Fee for .ee Domain Name Registration
As of May 2012, the annual fee for registering the Estonian .ee country code top-level domain (ccTLD) will be EUR 17 (USD 22) – VAT not included – which is a 6.5 percent decrease from the previous EUR 18.20 (USD 24), the Estonian Internet Foundation (EIF) informed in a statement released on December 19, 2011.
“Registration of domains has been active and the accruing number of domains allows the fee to be lowered. The EIF is among the EU’s most efficient top-level domain administrators,” Supervisory Board Chairman Marek-Andres Kauts said for ERR News, adding that the new lower fee will be sufficient to cover investments into the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) security application.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Pavlovic at our Macedonia office.
Source: ERR News - Estonian Public Broadcasting; Estonian Internet Foundation (EIF)
July 25, 2011
Letters With Diacritical Signs Now Allowed in Estonian Domain Names
As of June 13, 2011, everyone interested in registering .ee domain names containing letters with diacritical signs, such as õ, ä, ö, ü, š and ž, can do so on a first-come, first-served basis. There is no extra fee for registering such domain names, only the usual domain registration fee set by the accredited registrar.
Riho Kurg, head of the country’s largest domain name registrar Zone.ee, said that this addition should contribute toward a richer, less anglocentric Internet. “There are over 200 million domains in the world, but a recent UNESCO report said that only 2.8 million of them contain letters not in the English alphabet. Now Estonia is making its contribution for the good of the development of a multicultural and multilingual Internet,” he stressed.
Nearly 62,000 domains have been registered in Estonia since the new domain regulations entered into force in July 2010, which is 46 .ee domains per 1,000 residents.
“In one year, we have passed Latvia and Lithuania in terms of the number of domains per capita,” Estonian Internet Foundation CEO Marek-Andres Kauts assessed.
In Latvia there are 40 domains per 1,000 residents, while in Lithuania there are 43. Finland is just ahead of Estonia with 50 domains per 1,000 residents, while this figure in Sweden is 118.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Pavlovic at our Macedonia office.
Source: ERR News - Estonian Public Broadcasting; Estonian Internet Foundation (EIF)
June 21, 2011
Estonian File-Sharing Website Owner Fined for Copyright Infringement
The Estonian Pärnu County Court found Raido Käärid, the owner of the file-sharing website eestitorrent.com, guilty of copyright infringement.
Käärid was fined EUR 645 (USD 945) and was found guilty of illegally distributing Estonian and foreign movies and music, as well as recording and distributing TV shows broadcast on Estonian channels via his website.
The highest penalty in Estonia for illegal reproduction and distribution of commercial material is three years imprisonment.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Pavlovic at our Macedonia office.
Source: ERR News - Estonian Public Broadcasting
May 26, 2011
Estonian Architects Sue Construction Company for Copyright Infringement
Estonian architects Laur Pihel and Tauno Aadma have initiated court proceedings against the Estonian construction company Nordicasa for copyright infringement, asserting that Nordicasa is marketing and building in Spain, without their consent, an ethno-house that they designed and which was nominated for best-designed wood-based home this year.
The Estonian architects claim that an exact copy of the house they built in the Estonian village of Neeme in 2007 has been built in the Spanish ski resort of Valdelinares, maintaining that “the idea and the general architectural look is clearly plagiarized”.
On the other hand, Nordicasa head Jaak Kangro claims that his company bought the rights to this design from a Bolivian architect. Responding to the comment that a number of international architectural and design websites attribute this design to him, Kangro noted that he never claimed to be the architect, considering he is “just a builder”, and that he could not be responsible for what is written on the Internet.
Kangro further claims that the two buildings are “completely different”, citing his solicitor who argues that for the two houses to be copies, they need to be made using the same blueprint, which they are not. “There are different windows, doors, everything is in contrasting sizes, in different places, different numbers and different shapes,” Kangru said.
Pihel and Aadma have the support of the Union of Estonian Architects, which noted that, considering the unique concept of the house, the house in Spain “is very recognizably similar to the one in Estonia”.
To see the architects’ house, please go here.
To see the construction company’s house, please go here.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Pavlovic at our Macedonia office.
Source: ERR News - Estonian Public Broadcasting English-language news
April 27, 2011
38,000 Domain Names Released Following Estonian Domain Reform
On April 6, 2011, the Estonian Internet Foundation (EIF), the official registry of Estonian .ee country code top-level domain (ccTLD), released 38,000 domain names that had been registered in accordance with the old procedure but were not re-registered by the deadline of April 5, 2011 following the new domain system rules.
Approximately 1,200 of the released domain names were re-registered in the first 15 minutes after they became inactive. The EIF informed that the registration of the domain names that had been released would be on a first-come, first-served basis.
According to the EIF data, on March 30, 2011, the number of .ee domains registered according to the new procedure exceeded 55,000, which means that 13,805 new domains have been registered and 41,219 old domains have been re-registered since the new domain rules entered into force in July 2010.
For the list of the released domain names, please click here.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Pavlovic at our Macedonia office.
Source: Estonian Internet Foundation (EIF)
Estonian Software Pirate Sentenced to Prison
Estonian first instance court, the Harju County Court, has sentenced Estonian citizen Ott Speek to one year and three months in prison for copyright infringement, in a case that was filed back in 2004. This is the first such sentence passed by an Estonian court.
Speek was found guilty for illegally downloading and distributing popular video games, movies, and business software. Despite all the warnings and police raids to his home over the last six years, Speek continued to violate the copyright law.
Adobe Systems, Autodesk and Microsoft also brought a EUR 100,000 (USD 143,000) claim against Speek, which was partially satisfied in October 2010, when the court ordered Speek to pay EUR 6,680 (USD 9,546) in compensation to these companies.
In Estonia, the maximum sentence for illegal reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material is three years in prison.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Pavlovic at our Macedonia office.
Source: ERR News - Estonian Public Broadcasting English-language news portal
February 23, 2011
Estonia Amendments to Patent Law Introduce Prior Art Search
The Estonian government has recently prepared the amendments to the country’s patent law, which introduce prior art search and a new type of license called the “simple public license”. The amendments were submitted to the Estonian parliament for ratification on February 10, 2011.
Under the new regulations, the Estonian Patent Office will conduct prior art searches to determine whether an invention is novel on the global level. This service will be free of charge and it will not lengthen the registration process.
The amended law also introduces the “simple public license”, which is to be issued if a utility model right owner does not intend to use his own invention. In such cases, the owners will be able to release a notification in the Official Gazette stating their invention may be used within Estonia by anyone who pays a license fee.
A total of 107 utility models were registered in Estonia in the year 2010, which is 26 percent more than in 2009.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Pavlovic at our Macedonia office.
Source: ERR (Estonian Public Broadcasting)
Estonian Domain Reform Ends April 6, 2011
The Estonian Internet Foundation (EIF), the official registry of Estonian .ee country code top-level domain (ccTLD), is at the last stage of the domain register reorganization, which consists of re-registering active domains under the new rules. The domains that were not re-registered became inactive on February 6 and the related web pages and email addresses ceased to function. That said, the owners can still re-register these domains until April 6.
Marek-Andres Kauts, chairman of the EIF’s management board, explained that the domain registration costs used to be covered by the state and that domains did not have to be renewed since they had no expiration date. It was therefore common for owners to forget to deactivate the domain names that are not in use, a significant number of which has accumulated over the years.
The domain name owners had until January 5 to re-register their domain names and pay the annual registration fee. During the first 30 days of the termination period, January 5–February 5, the domains that were not re-registered were still active and domain owners still had a chance to re-register them. On February 6, they became inactive. The final stage of the termination process will last until April 6, when all domains not re-registered will be deleted from the register and will become available for new registration to everyone on a first-come, first-served basis.
The transition to the new domain system, which was launched in July 2010, introduced a few key changes:
- Foreign nationals are allowed to register .ee domain names;
- Individuals can register more than one .ee domain name;
- An annual fee for registration of domain names of EUR 18.20 (USD 25) was introduced.
The introduction of the annual registration fee sparked much criticism, considering that domains were registered for free before. The EIF representatives explained that the EIF is a non-profit organization where the registration fee is derived from the expenses related to domain names, meaning that the fee will be reduced in the future if the number of registered .ee domains increases.
According to the new domain rules, the EIF also established the Domain Disputes Committee, whose task is to consider and rule on domain disputes.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Pavlovic at our Macedonia office.
Source: Estonian Internet Foundation (EIF)
November 29, 2010
More Fake Goods Detained in Estonia in January-September 2010 than in 2009
In the period January-September 2010, the Estonian Tax and Customs Board officials detained a total of 245,170 units of fake goods, which greatly exceeds the total number of fake goods detained in all of year 2009 – 151,563.
According to the Internet news portal The Baltic Course, most of the goods detained were Asian-made clothes, footwear, electronics and other consumer goods.
Anne Osvet, head of PR at the Tax and Customs Board, highlighted the detention of 24,300 pairs of fake Crocs footwear in August as their biggest seizure this year.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Pavlovic at our Macedonia Office.
Source: Internet news portal The Baltic Course
September 21, 2010
Estonian University Gets European Patent for Lactic Acid Bacterium
Researchers from the Estonian University of Tartu, who discovered the lactic acid bacterium Lactobacillus fermentum ME-3 back in 1995, have been recently granted a patent in Europe for the use of this bacterium as a food ingredient in 24 countries.
The bacterium is already used as an ingredient in the Dr. Hellus dairy products, a trademark of Estonian leading food producer Tere. Russia and the United States already have patent holders for the bacterium.
The researchers from the university hope this bacterium can also be applied in the pharmaceutical industry.
“Until now, there hasn’t been a single application, in which a bacterium would act as an antioxidant. Lately, antioxidants have come to have a pretty significant role as supplements and medicines, but until now they have only been found in various plant products, such as rose hip tea, nettle tea and everything of that sort,” said Mihkel Zilmer, medical biochemistry professor and one of the bacterium’s discoverers.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Noveska at our Macedonia office.
Source: ERR News - Estonian Public Broadcasting English-language news portal
July 21, 2010
Estonia Gets US Patent, Its First Since Seceding from Soviet Union
The Estonian Tallinn University of Technology (TTÜ) has received a US patent for a materials study method that helps identify the properties of substances, materials, and structures on the basis of an electrical simulation signal.
As the Baltic Business News (BBN) reports, human cells, cell cultures, tissues, and organs are among the structures that could be studied by using this method as it makes it possible to observe the restoration of circulation in tissues after operations.
TTÜ professor Mart Min, one of the authors of this invention, said that this is probably the first US patent for an Estonian invention since the country seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991. Min also stated that agreements had been concluded with a few companies for the preparation of the invention for serial production that will cost approximately EUR 640,000 (USD 814,000).
The ELIKO technology development centre, an independent state-supported research organization established by TTÜ and private companies in 2004, has already started developing medical instruments necessary for this invention to be put into use.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Noveska at our Macedonia office.
Source: Baltic Business News
June 23, 2010
Estonian Registry Liberalizes .EE Domain Registration System as of July 5
The Estonian Internet Foundation (EIF), the official registry of the Estonian .EE country code top-level domain (ccTLD), has announced that the new rules regulating the .EE registration process will come into effect on July 5, 2010. The new rules will significantly liberalize the registration system, thus making the .EE domain more accessible.
As of July 5, in addition to the legal entities and natural persons, foreigners will also be allowed to register .EE domains and there will be no limit to the number of domains that natural persons and legal entities can register. The EIF will take over the management and registration of domain names from the current registry EENet and enforce the new regulations and fees. The EIF will also establish an arbitration court for domain disputes at its premises.
The EIF has accredited several .EE registrars and listed their names on its website. The owners of domain names registered under the old rules will be given a six-month transition period in order to choose a registrar and re-register their domains.
The new rules do not contain any references to the sunrise period for the owners of existing rights, such as the trademark owners.
The new rules were announced back in January and the new registration policy was expected to come into force on February 1, 2010, but the EIF postponed the deadline several times.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Noveska at our Macedonia office.
Source: EIF
March 30, 2010
WIPO Rules Against Estonian Student in Domain Name Dispute
On January 19, 2010, WIPO ruled that the domain name HQRedTube.com should be transferred from the Estonian student Senja Dumpin to Bright Imperial Ltd. of Hong Kong, the parent company of adult website RedTube.
RedTube argued that its brand is well-known in Estonia, citing statistics from the rating agency Alexa.com, showing that its website is the most popular adult website in Estonia and the 64th most popular site overall in Estonia. They also provided evidence that Dumpin’s website HQRedTube.com, created in April 2009, contained advertisements for adult videos, arguing that it copied the look and feel of RedTube’s website. RedTube also noted that Dumpin asked for USD 10,000 (EUR 7,260) to take down the website, presenting this as further proof of bad faith.
Dumpin told WIPO’s arbitrators that he did not make any money from this website and that RedTube did not lose any money by not having this domain. He also stressed that his website HQRedTube.com never had any content but only pointed to another website.
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Noveska in our Macedonia office.
Source: WIPO
December 22, 2009
Estonian Software Pirate to Pay EUR 100.000 in Damages to Five Software Companies
The court has ordered a 30-year-old software pirate Ott Speek to pay EUR 102,403 (USD 149,106) in damages to five software companies.
He was found guilty of intellectual property infringement for manufacturing and selling pirated software. Speek will also spend the next 15 months on probation.
He is to pay Microsoft EUR 19,200 (USD 27,930), Adobe Systems EUR 6,400 (USD 9,310), Corel Corporation EUR 1,389 (USD 2,020), Bentley Systems, Inc. EUR 5,173 (USD 7,526) and Autodesk, Inc. EUR 64,001 (USD 93,096).
For more information, please contact Aleksandra Noveska in our Macedonia office.
Source: Estonia Business News Channel
June 25, 2009
Estonia, Russia and Slovakia Accede and Ratify International IP Treaties
As reported by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Estonia, Russia and Slovakia have recently ratified various international IP treaties and conventions.
On May 12, 2009, Russia acceded to the Patent Law Treaty, adopted at Geneva on June 1, 2000. The Treaty will enter into force in Russia on August 12, 2009.
On the same day, Slovakia acceded to the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants as revised on March 19, 1991. The Convention entered into force in Slovakia on June 12, 2009.
On May 14, 2009, Estonia ratified the Singapore Treaty on the Law of Trademarks, adopted at Singapore on March 27, 2006. The Treaty will enter into force in Estonia on August 14, 2009.
For more information, please contact Jovana Miocinovic in our Balkan Regional Office.