The Higher Qualified Judges Council (HQJC) stripped the head of the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal, Sergei Sedov, and the judge of the same court, Boris Stechan, of their judgeships, RBC reported on March 13, citing sources.
As the publication notes, the last high-profile case considered by Boris Stechan was the dispute between Sberbank and FIT, the developer of the PayQR payment service.
Three judges of the Court of Appeal, headed by Stechan, ordered Sberbank to pay 1.445 billion rubles for violating the exclusive rights of the PayQR payment system. The bank was banned from using 15 designations, including SberPay QR, “Pay QR,” and “Pay QR from Sber.”
On March 13, the Intellectual Property Rights Court sided with the bank, overturning the ruling of the Ninth Arbitration Court and upholding the decision of the court of first instance. The court also canceled the decision requiring Speer to pay one and a half billion rubles.
RBC’s source in the Supreme Court reported that Chief Justice Igor Krasnov drew attention to the decision of the Court of Appeal to recover money from Speer. A source told RBC: “The circumstances of this trial raise doubts about the justice of such a decision.”