MOSCOW, March 16 - RAPSI. The Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals has partially validated the antimonopoly watchdog's decision that Ru-Center broke the law while registering .rf domains.

The court invalidated the watchdog's decision that Ru-Center was in collusion with other firms but validated the decision that it was involved in unfair competition.

The court partially validated Ru-Center's suit disputing the decision.

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 also ordered the registrar to return to the budget 239.36 million rubles ($8.14 million).

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 at Ru-Center amounted to 239.36 million rubles ($8.14 million).

The Moscow Commercial Court satisfied Ru-Center's lawsuit last November, thus dismissing the service's decision. However, the appeals court attracted the applicant in the antimonopoly case. Eventually, the Moscow Commercial Court's judicial act was dismissed, and the appeals instance began considering the dispute under the first-instance court's rules.

Ru-Center is one of the largest domain registrars in Russia, serving 2 million domain names.