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Rambler Board suggests that Lynwood withdraws statement

Rambler board convened for emergency meeting on Monday

MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. The Board of Directors of the Russian internet company Rambler suggests severing relations with Lynwood company, with rights to protect interests of Rambler transferred to it in 2015, after the situation occurred with Nginx. Lynwood is recommended to withdraw its statement, Rambler says in its press release after the extraordinary Board meeting.

"To ask the management of Rambler to ensure termination of the agreement with Lynwood and suggest that it approaches law enforcement agencies with a request for withdrawal of its statement," Rambler said.

Besides, the board tasked the company’s management with filing a request Russian law-enforcement bodies to end the previously launched criminal case and to continue defending company’s interests within the civil law domain.

Board Chairman of Rambler Group and First Deputy CEO of Sberbank Lev Khasis said that intellectual property disputes are common and it was natural for IT companies to defend their rights. However, he added that such disputes should be solved within the framework of the civil law.

"We will take all possible effort to solve this matter through consultations with the participation of all parties involved. We have already been in contact with Nginx company founders for several days already, and we will help in settling the matter. Besides, Sberbank reserves all the rights related to A&NN’s [Lynwood’s former name] violation of guarantees that had been granted to it," he said during the board meeting.

Seizure of documents related to a criminal case on copyright violation took place in Nginx office, a TASS source in law enforcement authorities said last Thursday. A dispute related to the computer program was the cause for proceedings, the source added. Rambler Group said on Thursday that its exclusive rights to the web-server Nginx developed by ex-employee of the company Igor Sysoev were breached.

Sysoev created Nginx in 2002, when he worked in Rambler. Nginx is one of the most popular web-servers worldwide at present. It is used for hosting of largest and most heavily loaded websites. The web-server was distributed for free under a license with an open code. In 2011, Sysoev left Rambler and founded Nginx, which started creating paid products based on software of the same name. The US-based F5 Networks acquired the project in March 2019 for $670 mln.