MOSCOW, November 9 - RAPSI. Yandex may submit new lawsuits against the owners of portals that illegally distribute its software, Yandex Press Secretary Ochir Mandzhikov told RIA Novosti on Friday.

Media reported on Friday that Yandex has sued Yevgeny Balabanov, the owner of the skan.ru website, for distributing the Punto Switcher program, to which Yandex has the exclusive rights.

The court has set the preliminary hearings into the lawsuit for November 30.

Mandzhikov said Skan.ru distributed an amended version of the program since March 2012. The software was not developed by Yandex and contained outside elements, such as the Sputnik@Mail.ru program.

Yandex seeks one million rubles ($31,750) in compensation from Balabanov.

"We consider the amount to be adequate compensation for the protracted violation of our copyrights by the defendant, which resulted in losses for us," Mandzhikov said.
Yandex said the defendant distributed Punto Switcher together with other programs in violation of license terms, and also changed the copyright information, thus confusing users.

Yandex said this is the first such proceeding on the Russian market.

Yandex is Russia's largest Internet company. It owns the leading Russian search engine, as well as a number of other services. Yandex's net profit under U.S. GAAP grew 34.4 percent to 2.29 billion rubles ($72.69 million) in the third quarter of 2012.