«Starlink from Ukraine wins a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s company

Ukrainian Starlink LLC has won the court of first instance against Elon Musk’s SpaceX. This is reported by dev.ua with reference to the direct speech of the participants in the trial. Since last year, the American tech giant has been demanding that the trademark registration of the Ukrainian company, whose name coincides with the name of a SpaceX subsidiary, be terminated. The court sided with the Ukrainians.

The Ukrainian brand Starlink has been around for a long time. The founder of the company is Sergey Dulitsky. He explained that his company has been providing IT services under the StarLink brand for over 14 years. Starlink LLC itself, according to the YouControl register, started operating in 2009. In turn, a subsidiary of the American Starlink appeared in Ukraine only in April 2022. It is called Starlink Ukraine LLC.

Dulitsky noted that he did not want to give his name to an American company for nothing. «It's not our fault that we chose this naming long before Starlink itself appeared,» he says. At the same time, the founder of the Ukrainian company admits the possibility of negotiations with SpaceX, but on the condition that Musk’s company compensates his company for the losses associated with the abandonment of the brand.

An interesting detail is that Musk probably used the services of Russian lawyers in this lawsuit. Dulitsky suggests that the office of the law firm that negotiated on behalf of SpaceX was located in Moscow. The Starlink owner also emphasized the professional incompetence of the intermediaries and their lack of understanding of the Ukrainian company’s activities. Ultimately, the negotiations led nowhere and everything ended in a court hearing.

But despite the legal proceedings, Musk nevertheless pledged to help Ukraine in its fight against the Russian occupiers. As a reminder, according to the head of the Ministry of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine has agreed with SpaceX to supply an additional 10,000 Starlink antennas to stabilize communications in case of emergency. This is despite the fact that the monthly fee for using the satellites has increased from $ 60 to $ 75.