MOSCOW, October 13 - RAPSI, Dmitry Shchitov. A commercial court will hear on November 1 a lawsuit filed by Ru-Center, the country's major domain registrar serving about two million domain names, to cancel the watchdog's decision obligating it to pay $7.59 million to the state budget, the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI) reported from the court on Thursday.

On November 11, 2010, the Coordination Center of the National Domain of Internet Network opened the free registration of domains in the new .rf domain area. Any volunteer could file an application for free registration.

To do this an individual or a company had to conclude a contract with one of 20 registrars and submit an application via the registrar. If the domain name was free, the information was entered into the registrar and the user was granted the status of the domain name's administrator.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service found Ru-Center guilty of unfair competition and collusion with five other companies, which resulted in the division of the market registering .rf domains.

The service found that in the first 12 hours of registration more than 115,450 domain names were registered for the six companies that took part in the collusion, with 70,914 registered by Ru-Center for itself.

The income received from closed bids on .rf domains held by the Ru-Center amounted to 239.36 million rubles ($7.59 million).

The antimonopoly service ordered the money to be returned to the federal budget.