The state-run Russian company that claims the rights to Stolichnaya vodka has targeted UK spirits and wine group Allied Domecq in its fight to control the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales of the famed Russian vodka in the US.
The filing in the Manhattan federal court on Thursday by lawyers representing Soyuzplodoimport is the first time the Russian government has extended its long-brewing fight with fugitive vodka tycoon Yury Shefler to the US market.
Soyuzplodoimport, which mana-ges Stolichnaya and other vodka brands in Russia, alleges that Allied Domecq broke the law when it signed a distribution deal with Shefler in 2001, saying that Shefler's SPI Spirits Group held the rights to Stolichnaya illegally.
Chris Swonger, a senior vice president at Allied Domecq's Washington office, said his company's deal with Shefler's spirits group were "incontestable" and "ironclad."
"Allied Domecq will vigorously defend its rights," Swonger said.
Lawyers for Soyuzplodoimport, an arm of the Agriculture Ministry, allege that Shefler forged and destroyed documents in order to snap up Stolichnaya and other popular Soviet era brands at a tiny fraction of their market value in a murky insider deal in the mid 1990s.
They say the brands' previous owner -- a Soviet food and drink importer -- had been wrongly privatized and had no right to sell what Soyuzplodoimport general director Vladimir Loginov called "an important part of Russia's national heritage."
"US sales of vodka using the misappropriated marks now exceed US$600 million annually," said Steven Madison, a lawyer with US law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, which is representing Soyuzplodoimport.
Last year, Soyuzplodoimport said the World International Property Organization had recognized it as the lawful owner of the international registration for Stolichnaya and other vodka trademarks.
Shefler contended that Russia's state patents and trademark agency had signed the labels over to the government without the necessary court ruling.
In 2002, the case took a turn when Russian prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Shefler for allegedly threatening to kill Loginov during a telephone conversation. Shefler called those charges ludicrous, but has since moved his company out of Russia to Latvia.
A protracted courtroom fight is in the cards: while Shefler tries to take back some of the rights to Stolichnaya in Russia, Soyuzplodoimport has so far been unsuccessful in tackling the trademarks' registration overseas.
SPI Group has said Stolichnaya is the world's best-selling vodka, with US$500 million in consumer retail sales in export markets.
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