title: Инсайд: Стенограмма прений в суде по иску i-CD Publishing к Альберту Попкову

content:
--- Дата публикации была изменена по техническим причинам. Реальная дата публикации - 26 ноября -------Новости СМИ2  Новости СМИ2  1         IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE         Claim No. HC 08 C00441
CHANCERY DIVISION
2         INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 3                                           Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London WC2A 3LL
4
Tuesday, 24th November 2009
5 6                                    Before: 7                               MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD 8                                --------------- 9         BETWEEN: 10                        (1) i-CD PUBLISHING (UK) LIMITED
(2) CARLENE INVESTMENTS LIMITED
11               (a company incorporated under the laws of Guernsey)
(3) WASABI ONLINE LIMITED
12                       (formerly known as PASSADO LIMITED)
Claimants
13                                     - and - 14                               (1) ALBERT POPKOV
(2) ODNOKLASSNIKI LIMITED
15                              (3) OOO ODNOKLASSNIKI
(a company incorporated under the laws of Russia)
16                                                            Defendants
- and -
17
ALASTAIR DUNCAN HADFIELD CRAWFORD
18                                                            Third Party 19 20                                --------------- 21             (Computer-aided Transcript of the Stenograph Notes of
Marten Walsh Cherer Ltd., 6th Floor,
22                    12-14 New Fetter Lane, London EC4A 1AG.
Telephone No:  020 7936 6000.  Fax No:  020 7427 0093)
23                       e-mail: info@martenwalshcherer.com) 24                                 --------------- 25 1 2
MR. JAMES MELLOR QC, MR. SIMON DEVONSHIRE QC and
3               MR. JAMES WHYTE (instructed by Messrs. Wedlake Bell)
appeared for the Claimants and the Third Party.
4
MR. CHARLES SAMEK QC, MR. BRIAN LACY and
5               MS. ANNA EDWARDS-STUART (instructed by Messrs. Bird &
Bird LLP) appeared for the First Defendant.
6
MR. MICHAEL BLOCH QC, MR. TOM MITCHESON, and
7               MR. JAMES WALMSLEY (instructed by Messrs. Nabarro LLP)
appeared for the Second and Third Defendants.
8 9
---------------
10                                   PROCEEDINGS
DAY ONE
11                                 --------------- 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2      MR. MELLOR:  May it please your Lordship.  I appear with 3          Mr. Devonshire and Mr. Whyte for the claimants.  My learned 4          friend Mr. Samek, Mr. Lacey and Ms. Edwards-Stuart appear for 5          Mr. Popkov.  In the middle Mr. Bloch, Mr. Mitcheson and 6          Mr. Walmsley appear for the corporate defendants. 7                My Lord, we recognise that any judge reading into this 8          case is faced with a fairly daunting task.  It may be sensible 9          to start by enquiring how far your Lordship has got with your 10          pre-reading. 11      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  I have read everything that was on the 12          reading list.  I will confess straightaway that by the time 13          I got to the end of the reading list I had the distinct 14          feeling I had forgotten what I had read at the start of the 15          reading list; but everything has been read. 16      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, we are very grateful for that.  From your 17          Lordship's indication, we apprehend that you have not yet had 18          an opportunity to get into any of the contemporaneous 19          documents. 20      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  No, save that I have looked at the employment 21          documents in bundle 12. 22      MR. MELLOR:  Thank you very much.  My Lord, I think my plan in 23          opening was to introduce your Lordship to at least some of the 24          key documents in the case.  My Lord, perhaps I can indicate 25          where I intend to go in my opening.  It will be apparent to 1 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          your Lordship that much in this case turns on whether 3          Mr. Popkov owed fiduciary duties to one or more of the 4          claimants and, indeed, the extent of those duties.  My Lord, 5          we say we have a powerful case that he did owe fiduciary 6          duties to the claimants in a number of respects and we set 7          those out in our skeleton.  Your Lordship will already know 8          that to examine our case and to examine the defendants' 9          countervailing arguments a fact-intensive enquiry is required. 10          It may well be, my Lord, that it is only after the facts have 11          been reviewed that it may be profitable to start to debate 12          some of the issues of law that arise in this case.  So my 13          Lord, I was not going to take your Lordship through all of the 14          law that is in our skeleton.  Indeed, I was not proposing to 15          rehearse the contents of our skeleton in my opening.  I was 16          proposing to add to it. 17      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  That is fine. 18      MR. MELLOR:  My opening will devote quite some time to addressing 19          your Lordship on the facts and after I have done that, I will 20          turn to just a few of what we would say are the plainer issues 21          of law to see if we can dispense with those at an early stage. 22                My Lord, I propose to deal with the facts first. 23      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Before you get too heavily into the facts, 24          I would like to get what I might call housekeeping matters out 25          of the way first if we can.  Where do we stand on your 2 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          application to re-re-amend particulars of claim and to adduce 3          the new evidence?  Is that in issue? 4      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, I understand it is in issue.  I had a quick 5          discussion with my learned friend Mr. Bloch but not with 6          Mr. Samek about this.  As I indicated to Mr. Bloch, I was 7          proposing to deal with those housekeeping issues towards the 8          end of my opening because it will be easier for your Lordship 9          to rule on those issues once we have a better grip on the 10          facts.  So if that is convenient for your Lordship, I propose 11          to deal with those towards the end of my opening.  Sorry, 12          I should have mentioned that. 13      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Could I make a few enquiries on other 14          housekeeping points.  Notwithstanding the large number of 15          bundles I do not seem to have had any authorities yet.  I hope 16          that is on the way. 17      MR. MELLOR:  Your Lordship should have, I am afraid, ten bundles 18          of authorities.  I received mine yesterday. 19      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  That must be a record, at least as far as 20          I am concerned.  My clerk is just pointing out to me that 21          there are two boxes that have recently arrived but have not 22          actually made their way to me.  I see them sitting there in 23          the corner, now I know what they are. 24      MR. MELLOR:  We may have cause to open maybe a couple of those 25          files tomorrow morning. 3 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Very good.  Timetable? 3      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, my diligent junior, Mr. Whyte, has a 4          detailed timetable.  I think so far as immediate planning is 5          concerned, my Lord, I expect my opening to last a day, perhaps 6          a little bit more.  I understand that each of my learned 7          friends has an opening of about an hour. 8      MR. SAMEK:  My Lord, no, not from me. 9      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  You do not propose to make an opening at all? 10      MR. SAMEK:  No, my Lord, it is there in writing and we just want 11          to get on with the evidence. 12      MR. MELLOR:  Thank you for that clarification.  I understand my 13          learned friend Mr. Bloch none the less has an hour in opening. 14          Then, my first witness will Mr. Alastair Crawford and the 15          cross-examination estimate for him is five days. 16      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  I saw that mentioned in your skeleton 17          argument.  That I think is going to require some discussion 18          because at the moment I do not quite see why that should be 19          necessary. 20      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, we entirely understand your Lordship's 21          point.  My Lord, whether it is five days or hopefully ---- 22      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  More generally, leaving aside the specifics 23          of that particular witness, have you all exchanged 24          cross-examination estimates for all the witnesses and do you 25          have an order of witnesses planned? 4 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2      MR. MELLOR:  Yes, my Lord, my learned friends have had my order of 3          witnesses I think at least a week ago.  We do have a trial 4          timetable.  It almost certainly needs some revision, depending 5          on where we get to with Mr. Crawford.  I think your Lordship 6          may have seen certain letters from Bird & Bird in the lead up 7          to trial, certainly they were writing to the Listing Officer. 8          The estimate for trial was going up and up.  My Lord, those 9          estimates were not agreed with us and we are concerned about 10          the estimates.  They seem to be approaching six weeks now. 11          Bird & Bird were predicting that we would not reach the expert 12          evidence before Christmas.  My Lord, we may need to consider 13          that towards the end of the opening to see if your Lordship 14          wishes to undertake some case management. 15      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  I think we do need to consider how best to 16          manage the trial so as to get through the material in the most 17          efficient way. 18      MR. MELLOR:  Indeed. 19      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  I appreciate it is an important case for all 20          concerned and I appreciate that there are quite a number of 21          witnesses and quite a lot of documents, but even so, I would 22          hope that we could get through things in less than six weeks. 23      MR. MELLOR:  Yes. 24      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  That does all rather depend on timetabling, 25          so I think at some point we are going to have to look at the 5 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          timetable. 3      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, perhaps I can suggest that overnight we 4          finalise or just dig out the timetable that we have and 5          perhaps we can ---- 6      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  All right, let's discuss that tomorrow. 7          I have noticed that we have at least two witnesses whose 8          witness statements were made in Russian.  I take it, 9          therefore, we are going to have interpreters at least for 10          those witnesses.  Any others? 11      MR. MELLOR:  So I understand, my Lord, yes. 12      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  I also notice that we have some witnesses who 13          are resident in other jurisdictions.  Is it intended that any 14          of them should give evidence by videolink?  Because nobody has 15          approached me for an order. 16      MR. MELLOR:  No, my Lord, at the moment we are endeavouring to get 17          the witnesses to travel here.  If the position changes then, 18          of course, we will raise the question of videolink between 19          ourselves but also with your Lordship. 20      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Very good.  Then finally, I think on my list 21          for the moment, I have not yet had electronic copies of the 22          witness statements and experts' reports and I would like to 23          have those, please. 24      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, certainly, we have, I hope, searchable PDFs. 25      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  I would rather have them in Word format if 6 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          that can be provided.  Failing that, then I will take 3          searchable PDFs, but in my experience searchable PDFs tend to 4          be temperamental. 5      MR. MELLOR:  I think it depends whether you want the 6          cross-references written on or not. 7      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  I am not bothered about the cross-references. 8      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, the Word documents will be provided.  I have 9          just been handed our trial estimate, so I do not know if your 10          Lordship would like to glance at it now? 11      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Why not?  Let's have a quick look and we can 12          at least get an initial impression.  (Same handed) 13      MR. MELLOR:  In fact, my Lord, it reminds me of a point that has 14          recently arisen about the availability of one of our 15          witnesses, Mr. Salzbrunn, because he has indicated he is 16          involved in a very big project and he can only come on 17          14th December.  My Lord, that is very likely to be after the 18          remainder of my witnesses have finished and so, my Lord, we 19          will be seeking their permission to interpose him at a 20          suitable point. 21                My Lord, you can see the order of my witnesses there. 22          What we have done, we have inserted the cross-examination 23          estimates from my learned friends on the basis that 4.5 hours 24          represents a useful day's time.  That may be a slight 25          underestimate, my Lord, but it is the working rule in this 7 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          schedule. 3      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Yes, that is fine. 4      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, at the moment, Mr. Crawford is down for four 5          days with Mr. Samek and one day with Mr. Bloch. 6          Mr. Proudnikov is next and your Lordship sees how the 7          substantial witnesses are really Mr. Crawford and Mr. Marsden. 8          So Mr. Marsden is down for a day plus.  My Lord, we have put 9          Mr. Popkov down for three days cross-examination, which 10          I think our estimate for Mr. Popkov will in some ways depend 11          on the time spent with Mr. Crawford. 12      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Yes, I can understand that.  Certainly, if we 13          stick to this kind of timetable, then that is likely to lead 14          to at least some of the experts going into next term. 15      MR. MELLOR:  Yes. 16      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  I would have thought it is desirable, if we 17          possibly can, to complete the evidence this term.  Now, if 18          that is not possible, then it is not possible and we will 19          proceed accordingly.  I would ask counsel to put their heads 20          together to see whether it is not possible to achieve that. 21          I appreciate at this stage of the trial everything is still a 22          little bit fluid and that things will bed down as we go on and 23          I appreciate that estimating cross-examination is not a 24          science and that allowance must be made for those whose mother 25          tongue is not English and the fact that witnesses are not 8 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          always direct in answering questions and, no doubt, injury 3          time from the judge too.  Even allowing for all of those 4          factors, I would hope that you could see your way to agreeing 5          a timetable that would give us at least a chance of completing 6          the evidence by the end of term and then we could resume for 7          closing submissions next term.  That would seem to me to be a 8          sensible aim to try and achieve.  Whether it is feasible, as 9          I say, I do not know, but I would ask you to at least talk 10          about it and see where you get to. 11      MR. MELLOR:  Let's do that, my Lord, and, as you say, see where we 12          get to. 13                My Lord, so to the facts.  What I am attempting to do in 14          my opening is to divide the timeline into significant distinct 15          periods.  My Lord, rather than read out a long list of those 16          periods, let me just dive in with the early years, which are 17          effectively 1999, 2000 and most of 2001.  There is only a very 18          little to say about these early years but it is none the less 19          an important period because in February 1999 Mr. Popkov 20          started working as a freelance computer programmer for i-CD 21          and Quantum Art in Russia was newly incorporated in the year 22          2000 and Mr. Popkov has always been very closely associated 23          with Quantum Art in Russia. 24                Your Lordship knows that at Mr. Crawford's instigation, 25          Mr. Popkov was secured a work permit and he commenced his 9 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          employment with i-CD in the UK on 22nd May 2000.  In those 3          early years, his duties were to transform i-CD's business from 4          its previous CD-based business.  My Lord, i-CD in the early 5          years built its business on a directory enquiries compact disc 6          product and the purpose of Mr. Popkov being employed was to 7          develop the 192.com directory enquiries website.  That took 8          place and it is no exaggeration to say it transformed the 9          business of i-CD from the CD product business to the 192.com 10          directory enquiries website business, and the website business 11          proved to be very successful.  The website was extremely 12          successful. 13                My Lord, at that stage i-CD was a relatively small 14          company and Mr. Popkov was proving himself to be an essential 15          part of that company.  It is in those early years that he 16          gained the trust and the confidence of Mr. Crawford.  That is 17          where their relationship was built up. 18                So, my Lord, those early years are an important part of 19          the story.  We next move to the start of the claimant's 20          interest in social networking sites.  My Lord, this began in 21          2001 and it may be best to start by showing your Lordship a 22          business plan which your Lordship will find in Bundle 13A 23          starting at page 9. 24      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Yes. 25      MR. MELLOR:  Your Lordship will see that this is an i-CD business 10 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          plan dated 29th October 2001 and at this stage the social 3          networking business was referred to as the Alumni Project 4          (AP).  My Lord, page 10 is a subsection:  "What is the Alumni 5          Project? The concept is simple,.  AP is a database of all 6          national Schools and Universities in a country."  Sorry, it is 7          13A page 9.  I was also on page 10, section 2.1.  Your 8          Lordship has no doubt read that. 9                Your Lordship will note section 2.4, Huge Barrier to 10          Entry on the next page:  "Once a site has achieved a certain 11          threshold of users, giving it a real intrinsic value, it is 12          very difficult for another start-up site to challenge their 13          market position; unable to attract a user to sign up with 14          their empty site over a site that is already valuable with 15          data and traffic.  We believe this threshold is approximately 16          1% of the internet population."  Your Lordship will recognise 17          that as being an issue that is hotly in issue in this case and 18          debated amongst the so-called SMM experts. 19                My Lord, section 2.7 over the page. 20      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  I cannot resist.  I was trying to resist and 21          I cannot.  You say "so-called."  Given that you have adduced 22          evidence from such an expert, what precisely is the inwardness 23          of that epithet? 24      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, no, it is nothing more than the title, the 25          social media and marketing experts.  I was not intending to 11 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          denigrate their skills.  My Lord, over the page on page 12 the 3          strategy of AP within i-CD:  "Existing Alumni projects all 4          share the same two problems.  The Ramp up Period and then the 5          value, at B.  Then i-CD's solution over the page, this was the 6          proposal at that point, and your Lordship sees in the third 7          line they proposed a simple pop-up to present to users. 8                My Lord, this pop-up was actually coded over the 9          Christmas period and launched in early January and it was 10          really the precursor to the writing and launch of Passado v1. 11          This is the pop-up that is discussed in some of the evidence. 12          The purpose of the pop-up was to gather people's details, 13          collect those in a database and as you see in the final part 14          of that paragraph, it says:  "192.com servers are able to 15          collect the database  allowing the AP site to launch with an 16          initial 200,000 members - critical mass."  So the idea was to 17          give the social networking site, the Alumni Project, a 18          kick-start with this pop-up idea. 19                My Lord, over the page on pages 14 and 15, you will see 20          under section 2.8 the initial territory targets of AP and 21          Germany is head of the queue, not least because it had a very 22          high penetration of internet users at that time.  Italy, 23          Spain, and France in the second group and then Russia, over 24          the page, was identified as a specific target, not least 25          because of a very large number of inhabitants and although the 12 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          number on line was far less than in Germany and Italy, it was 3          expected to rise very swiftly.  My Lord, Russia was always a 4          target for the i-CD social networking website. 5          Notwithstanding Mr. Popkov's attempts to say that Russia fell 6          out of the picture, it never did.  In fact, it does not make 7          sense for Russia to fall off the radar for a project of this 8          nature. 9                My Lord, if your Lordship would just turn on a couple 10          more pages to 17(1A) and 17(1B) your Lordship will see two 11          pages which report on some investigations under the heading, 12          "Russia of Odnoklassniki.com, mates.ru and classmates.ru.  My 13          Lord, these two pages were the result of enquiries conducted 14          by Mr. Popkov at the direction of Mr. Crawford as to the state 15          of social networking sites in Russia and Eastern Europe. 16                If your Lordship turns on one further page to 17(1C), 17          your Lordship will see a full report which was from November 18          2001 detailing Friends Reunited sites worldwide and the two 19          pages we have just looked at on Russia are at pages 15 and 16 20          of the report. 21                My Lord, the point to note for the moment is the 22          reference to Odnoklassniki.com because that becomes 23          significant when we come, in early January, to Mr. Popkov's 24          registration of what has been called the first domain name in 25          this case, Odnoklassniki.ru.  He says he does not remember the 13 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          circumstances in which he registered that domain name.  We say 3          it is clear from this report and other circumstances around 4          that time that he registered it because of this research 5          undertaken for the claimants into social networking sites in 6          Russia and Eastern Europe; and indeed, he registered that 7          first domain name for the claimant. 8      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  When you say "for", do you mean he was an 9          agent stricto sensuo? 10      MR. MELLOR:  Yes.  He did it because of the tasks that he had been 11          assigned when researching the social networking sites in 12          Russia.  My Lord, that will become more apparent when we touch 13          on some of the details of what was happening around this time 14          because your Lordship has seen the results of the research 15          that Mr. Popkov carried out and, indeed, that resulted in 16          contact being made between i-CD and mates.ru, so discussions 17          took place, I think Mr. Larter and Mr. Popkov were in Russia 18          in December 2001 and they met with mates.ru.  My Lord, I think 19          we can put Bundle 13A away. 20                What was happening around this time was that i-CD was in 21          serious negotiations to purchase Friends Reunited.  My Lord, 22          in fact what happened was Friends Reunited were undergoing the 23          sort of viral growth that we see in the later Odnoklassniki 24          website and that as a result of that viral growth the price of 25          the Friends Reunited business was increasing all the time. 14 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          Although i-CD undertook due diligence into the Friends 3          Reunited business and Mr. Popkov was involved in investigating 4          the technical side of the Friends Reunited business, 5          eventually i-CD got priced out of that deal by around December 6          2001. 7                As your Lordship has seen, i-CD were investigating the 8          possible purchase of other social networking websites in 9          Europe and Russia.  Hence, the meeting with mates.ru.  My 10          Lord, eventually those efforts resulted in the purchase of, at 11          that time, quite a small social networking website in Germany, 12          Passado.de and that purchase went through in very early 13          January 2002. 14                My Lord, running side by side the investigations of 15          purchase of other social networking websites was the pop-up 16          that we saw in the business plan.  Mr. Popkov was delegated 17          the task of programming that pop-up.  In his witness statement 18          he is a little vague as to when that actually happened but we 19          can pin it down to December and early January because when 20          Mr. Popkov was in Russia, he was talking to a designer called 21          Dmitry Utkin about the design of the pop-up for registration 22          and there is an e-mail on 20th December 2001 concerning that. 23                My Lord, on 24th December 2001, Mr. Popkov went to 24          Russia and he says he was on his holidays until 8th January 25          2001.  Over that time on 4th January he says that he was idly 15 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          browsing the internet, he noted that Odnoklassniki.ru was free 3          and that as I have mentioned earlier, he cannot remember now 4          what prompted him to register it.  That is paragraph 78 of his 5          witness statement. 6                It would appear that he did notice that it was free on 7          4th January 2002.  That was clearly a working day for 8          Mr. Popkov and for the i-CD business and there are a large 9          numbers of e-mails in Bundle 11A where Mr. Popkov was 10          exchanging e-mails with various i-CD personnel on work 11          matters.  In one of those e-mails, and, my Lord, perhaps we 12          should pick it up, Bundle 11A page 45 ---- 13      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Why does it matter whether it is a working 14          day or not? 15      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, it may well not, but I think part of 16          Mr. Popkov's case is that he seems to think it is important 17          that he did this whilst on holiday in Russia.  We are simply 18          pointing out he was not on holiday; he was certainly 19          undertaking work for i-CD in Russia on 4th January. 20      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  He may have been both.  It might have been 21          during his holiday period and yet he may have been spending 22          part of his time working. 23      MR. MELLOR:  To be clear, our case is that he was on i-CD business 24          on 4th January. 25      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Is it your case that he was not on holiday 16 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          during that period? 3      MR. MELLOR:  He was on holiday over part of Christmas, but 4          particularly when he travelled to Moscow on 7th January and 5          actually completed the registration on 8th January, he was 6          certainly there on i-CD business and his expenses were paid by 7          i-CD. 8                If your Lordship would take Bundle 11A and turn to 9          page 45. 10      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Yes. 11      MR. MELLOR:  This is Mr. Popkov sending an e-mail on 4th January 12          and it is one of a number of e-mails on that day.  He is 13          sending it to Mr. Crawford:  "Subject:  Moscow plans" and your 14          Lordship sees further down:  "I'm going back to Moscow on 15          Monday, it will be Christmas here."  Christmas in Russia was 16          on 7th January that year.  "Then I'm flying to London Tuesday 17          evening (to change this I need to upgrade ticket what is not 18          expensive either..about 130 pounds).  For now my plans for 19          Tuesday" -- that is 8th January -- "are to meet Slava and 20          Dmitry" -- that is Slava at Quantum Art, Dmitry is the 21          designer of the pop-up -- "and another development team I 22          found recently and visit .ru domains registration office in 23          Moscow to open account there." 24                Mr. Crawford cannot remember precisely what gave rise to 25          this.  It is quite likely that he spoke to Mr. Popkov on the 17 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          phone that day but Mr. Popkov really had no reason to report 3          to Mr. Crawford that he was visiting the .ru domain's 4          registration office to open an account other than because he 5          was doing it on behalf of i-CD.  So, my Lord, on 8th January, 6          the application for odnoklassniki.ru was completed. 7                My Lord, one thing we will have to explore in evidence 8          is whether the cost of that domain name registration fell 9          within the cash expenses that Mr. Popkov claimed for over that 10          trip.  We say it is very likely that it did because 11          Mr. Popkov, when we examine his expenses, he claimed for just 12          about everything.  He had certainly withdrawn more than enough 13          cash from cash machines on that trip, which appear on his 14          expense forms, to cover the cost of that domain registration. 15          My Lord whether the cost of that domain name registration was 16          charged to i-CD or not does not really affect our case that 17          Mr. Popkov registered that domain name on behalf of i-CD and 18          since that date he has remained fiduciary in respect of that 19          (I would put it in inverted commas) "property". 20      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  If you put it in inverted commas, that is 21          quite an important question, is it not?  Let's nail down what 22          your case is.  Is it your case that it is property? 23      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, no, it is a shows in action.  There is 24          certainly no obstacle to a shows in action like a domain name 25          being the subject of a fiduciary duty, a tracing claim, and a 18 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          claim for main receipt of trust property. 3                My Lord, with the greatest of respect to Mr. Bloch and 4          his team, their objections to the domain names, .ru domain 5          names cannot be the subject of claims in this country is 6          simply wrong and it does not require any consideration of 7          Russian law for us to pursue a claim to Russian domain names 8          in the hands of defendants that are subject to the 9          jurisdiction of this court. 10      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Why do you say Russian law is irrelevant? 11      MR. MELLOR:  Because, my Lord, we are enforcing fiduciary and 12          contractual duties under English law in this country.  The 13          orders we seek in relation to the Russian domain names are 14          nothing more than the consequences of those causes of action 15          being established. 16                My Lord, at the same time that Mr. Popkov was 17          registering odnoklassniki.ru there were others in i-CD who 18          were investigating suitable domain names for use in other 19          countries, so that, of itself, points to a pattern of 20          registration of suitable domain names, of which 21          odnoklassniki.ru was obviously considered by Mr. Popkov to be 22          suitable. 23                My Lord, although in the early stages of these domain 24          name registrations it would appear that Mr. Popkov paid cash, 25          your Lordship will have seen the reference to him opening an 19 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          account and in due course we will see that that account was 3          topped up via Quantum Art.  So Quantum Art paid sums to top up 4          the account and then those sums were charged to i-CD, almost 5          certainly wrapped up in the invoices that were rendered to 6          i-CD. 7                My Lord, one other point about the Odnoklassniki domain 8          name.  It appears to be common ground that at some point 9          Mr. Popkov told Mr. Crawford that Odnoklassniki was much 10          better suited to this type of website in Russia than a Passado 11          domain name.  Quite when he said this and the circumstances in 12          which he did it will probably have to be explored in evidence 13          but it is certainly common ground that at some point 14          Mr. Popkov told Mr. Crawford that odnoklassniki.ru was a much 15          better domain name for this type of website than Passado, 16          simply because Passado would not mean anything to Russian 17          internet users, whereas Odnoklassniki has the benefit of being 18          instantly informative, it means effectively classmates/school 19          friends in Russian. 20                Your Lordship may have picked up also that Mr. Popkov 21          has registered various other domain names in Russia, 09.ru, 22          the significance of that is 09 is the equivalent in Russia of 23          192 and your Lordship may see at various points that 24          Mr. Crawford also asked Mr. Popkov to register (?)kanga.ru in 25          Russia, unfortunately it had been taken. 20 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2                My Lord, the registration of the domain names was part 3          of the development of the Passado business and I think the 4          purchase of that went through on 8th January 2002.  Passado v1 5          was the development of the existing Passado business and it 6          occurred relatively swiftly.  The design and the programming 7          of Passado v1 took place in January and February 2002 and the 8          Passado v1 was first launched in March 2002.  That was the 9          site in Germany.  It was extended to Austria in June 2002 and 10          then in September and October to Italy, Spain, and France. 11                Your Lordship will understand that Mr. Popkov's duties 12          and responsibilities in relation to Passado v1 form an 13          important backdrop to the big debate in this case about what 14          duties and responsibilities he had on Passado v2.  My Lord, so 15          far as Passado v1 is concerned, there is a debate between us 16          and the defendants about precisely what duties and 17          responsibilities Mr. Popkov had, but at the very least there 18          are some duties that we are in agreement on, one being that he 19          had the duty to oversee Quantum Art's work from a quality 20          perspective.  My Lord, that is nothing more than exactly what 21          you would expect.  You have an outside developer (Quantum 22          Art); you have your head developer (Mr. Popkov) inside the 23          company.  He has a relationship with Quantum Art, in the sense 24          that he has worked with them and knows the personnel, 25          including Slava, well.  Most particularly, he is the only 21 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          person within i-CD who speaks Russian and who has the 3          technical ability to oversee their software coding from a 4          quality perspective. 5                My Lord, bearing in mind the big issues that are going 6          to arise on Passado v2, your Lordship may wish to note that 7          the documentary trail which evidences Mr. Popkov's performance 8          of many of his duties in relation to Passado v1 is either not 9          to be found, or there is very little that remains.  For 10          example, one would look in vain for documents which evidence 11          Mr. Popkov overseeing Quantum Art's software from a quality 12          perspective and yet, when it comes to Passado v2, the 13          defendants make a very big play of the lack of documentation 14          evidencing Mr. Popkov carrying out duties of that nature. 15                My Lord, although Passado v2 was a bigger project and 16          there were more people involved, and some of those people may 17          have effectively removed from Mr. Popkov some of his 18          non-technical duties, the real point is that there is no 19          reason why Mr. Popkov's duties should have changed between 20          Passado versions 1 and 2.  There was greater project 21          management capability on Passado v2 so that Mr. Popkov was 22          relieved of any project management role, but my Lord that is 23          just keeping tabs on what is going on, making sure that tasks 24          were assigned and ticked off.  But from a technical viewpoint, 25          there was no reason why his duties should have changed.  Nor, 22 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          indeed, any reason why anybody at i-CD, especially 3          Mr. Crawford, would think that his duties had changed.  We 4          will come to this in more detail a little later, my Lord, but 5          Mr. Popkov's arguments on Passado v2 seem to vary.  In 6          essence, we believe he argues that there was a radical change 7          in the scope of his duties and responsibilities as between 8          Passado versions 1 and 2 and we say that is wishful thinking 9          on his part. 10                My Lord, I am not going to trouble you with much of the 11          detail of other developments in 2002 and 2003, but I do wish 12          to concentrate on one or two points.  Your Lordship will have 13          read about the bribes arrangement.  My Lord, as far as our 14          investigations reveal, the earliest indication of this comes 15          in October 2002.  Your Lordship will see, if your Lordship 16          would be kind enough to take Bundle 14A, page 11 an e-mail 17          from Slava to Mr. Popkov on 24th October 2002.  My Lord, I 18          apologise at the Russian headings to these columns have not 19          been translated, but if memory serves me right, the first 20          heading is project and then the fourth heading is the price of 21          the work done.  The next column is commission expressed as a 22          percentage, and then the next column is the amount of that 23          commission and then there are two further columns which 24          actually have the same numbers as the earlier two columns, and 25          those are, I think, to record when payments are made. 23 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          Although this is dated October 2002, your Lordship will see 3          that it goes back to Passado design, Passado phase 1 and also 4          Passado Italy, Passado France, Passado Spain and Passado 5          Autriche.  My Lord it would appear that the arrangement that 6          is recorded in this e-mail went back to the very beginning of 7          Quantum Art's work for i-CD.  And we can see that Mr. Popkov 8          was going to be paid, or was paid, a commission which was 9          initially 10%, sometimes 15%, sometimes 100%, sometimes 20%, 10          sometimes 85%. 11                My Lord, we have managed to find a large number of 12          e-mails where Slava throughout was telling Mr. Popkov the 13          payments that would be made to him under the bribes 14          arrangement.  Your Lordship knows that Mr. Popkov has admitted 15          taking bribes in the sum of over 50 thousand dollars (all 16          these figures are in US dollars).  Your Lordship will have 17          seen from our skeleton that the precise sum that Mr. Popkov 18          took in bribes has yet to be ascertained.  At various points 19          in his evidence, he tries to suggest that this bribes 20          arrangement may have ended before Quantum Art 's work for i-CD 21          finished at the time that he tendered his resignation in 22          November 2005.  But my Lord, it is pretty clear that he was 23          taking bribes from Quantum Art throughout; in other words, 24          from the start of Quantum Art's work, probably in January 25          2002, right through to the conclusion in about November 2005. 24 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2                Your Lordship will have seen how Mr. Popkov deals with 3          this in his witness statement.  He says he now understands it 4          to be wrong but, my Lord, what he does not deal with in his 5          witness statement, and what the first defendant's case does 6          not deal with, are the ramifications of this bribes 7          arrangement on other aspects of Mr. Popkov's behaviour 8          because this bribes arrangement affects just about everything 9          else that Mr. Popkov did.  It led to him disclosing to Quantum 10          Art confidential e-mails from within i-CD, giving them 11          advanced notice.  When competitive bidding was undertaken for 12          the Passado v2 project, Mr. Popkov fed to Quantum Art the 13          rival bid so that they could ensure they beat it, and when 14          Quantum Art were filling out the questionnaire relating to the 15          Passado v2 bid, Slava sent the draft to Mr. Popkov so that he 16          could comment on it and no doubt improve it so that Quantum 17          Art could be sure of getting the business.  My Lord, indeed 18          whole competitive bid situation on Passado v2 was instigated 19          by Mr. Popkov.  We infer that he instigated this to ensure 20          that Slava would continue to pay his bribes and so he was 21          threatening Slava with losing i-CD's business to keep him on 22          side.  Of course, Slava did stay on side and, therefore, 23          Mr. Popkov ensured that Quantum Art got the business. 24                My Lord, one other point relating to events in 2002 and 25          2003.  The reason for raising this is because at one point 25 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          Mr. Popkov himself came up with the idea that there should be 3          a single point of contact on the Passado project between i-CD 4          and Quantum Art.  My Lord, the need for a single point of 5          contact on a software project between those who are specifying 6          the business needs and the programmers is evident.  It is so 7          that you do not get crossed lines of communication. 8          Everything is fed through one person and that person can keep 9          control of the needs and requirements on the business side. 10                My Lord, when it comes to Passado v2, it would appear 11          that Mr. Popkov's case places a lot of emphasis on the role of 12          Mr. Salzbrunn.  He was project manager for Passado v2 and he 13          appointed himself as the single point of contact between i-CD 14          and the programming team.  But as we will see in due course, 15          that did not in any way exclude Mr. Popkov's very important 16          role in Passado v2.  It simply meant that in project 17          management terms, Mr. Salzbrunn was the project manager and 18          was keeping control of the business requirements for the 19          project. 20                My Lord, the Passado v1 business continued to expand 21          through 2003 and one of the territories that remained on the 22          radar was Russia.  This brings to us the registration by 23          Mr. Popkov of the second domain name.  This was "Odnoklasniki" 24          (with a single "s") which is useful for two reasons, one is 25          because that is the Ukrainian spelling of the word.  It is 26 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          also extremely valuable for a business of this nature because 3          it would catch people misspelling Odnoklassniki as they type 4          it into their web browser. 5                My Lord, Mr. Popkov registered his second domain name 6          and it was picked up when what is called the "May schedule" 7          was being circulated.  My Lord, we can pick up the May 8          schedule at Bundle 11B, please, starting at page 438.  If your 9          Lordship has page 438 it is an e-mail from Laurence Crawford 10          to Laurence Fromme, Mr. Popkov, another employee of i-CD, 11          Claire Anstee.  The subject is "Alexey needs your help", that 12          is a reference to Alexey Bushnev who was project manager of 13          Passado v1 at this time. 14                Over the pages, my Lord at 439 and 440, this is the 15          version at that point of the so-called "May schedule."  My 16          Lord, in row 7 you will see Passado.ru.  The situation at this 17          point is that Mr. Fromme had registered already a number of 18          Passado domain names including Passado.ru so that was already 19          registered.  The jobs that needed doing were "register domain 20          names (Albert?)" and then in the third column "looks like no 21          progress in two weeks" and various other tasks for Albert are 22          in that second column.  There is a comment "Albert, what is 23          happening here?" 24                My Lord, we will find out what happened, or what was 25          happening, at page 448.  Page 448 is an e-mail from Mr. Popkov 27 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          on 20th May to Alexey Bushnev, Laurence Fromme, Alastair 3          Crawford, Igor Grinev and Slava:  "Please update the schedule 4          based on the following.  1. passado.com - registered and 5          pointed to passado servers (on the 2nd of may).   2.russian 6          domain name - registered (on 15 jan 2002)".  My Lord that is a 7          reference to the first domain name, that is odnoklassniki.ru. 8          -- "alternative name [that is Odnoklasniki.ru] registered on 9          5th May" 2003. 10                So, my Lord, further confirmation, we say, that 11          Mr. Popkov registered both these domain names for i-CD and 12          although they were registered in his name, he held these 13          domain names as a fiduciary for the company.  Indeed, later 14          on, your Lordship may have read that Mr. Crawford was writing 15          a report for the purposes of various investors in the Passado 16          business and he asked -- in fact I may have got my dates a bit 17          mixed up, he may have done this before this date.  My 18          suspicion was right, my Lord.  This report was in August '02, 19          29th August '02 and perhaps you can just pick that up in 20          Bundle 11A, at page 208. 21                My Lord, 208 is just an e-mail from Mr. Crawford to 22          himself.  It just puts a date on the document which follows. 23          It is a report on the current state of Passado.  If your 24          Lordship turns on to page 212, there is a list by the second 25          hole punch:  "URL intellectual property we now own" and here 28 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          Mr. Crawford recorded as odmoklassmiki, classmates in Russian, 3          and Mr. Crawford said it is very likely he misspelled it 4          because he was just typing what Mr. Popkov had told him as the 5          name, hence the misspelling.  But again, very clear evidence 6          that the domain name was clearly registered and understood by 7          Mr. Popkov to be the property in so far as there was ownership 8          of this shows in action the property of i-CD. 9                My Lord, the last significant event in 2003 was 16th 10          December 2003, which was when Mr. Popkov signed his service 11          agreement.  Your Lordship may know that that is the one 12          contract of employment Mr. Popkov accepts he signed.  My Lord, 13          I will not take you to that document because your Lordship has 14          kindly glanced at it already, but one thing I would take you 15          to is what he said about the significance of that document 16          when he was explaining to the corporate defendants -- sorry, 17          explaining to investors in the corporate defendants what had 18          happened.  If your Lordship would kindly take Bundle 13C and 19          turn to page 841. 20      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Can you enlighten me on what the distinction 21          is between the 13 bundles and the 11 bundles?  13 describes 22          dated documents, whereas most of those in 11 seem to have 23          dates on. 24      MR. MELLOR:  Your Lordship is absolutely right.  My Lord, I think 25          it was thought convenient to extract out of the general 29 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          chronological bundle, which is 11, particular documents which 3          are in 13.  My Lord, you will also see bundle 14, it is 4          entitled "group documents" but they are groups of documents, 5          which are conveniently grouped together. 6      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  So the net result is that there is not a 7          chronological bundle of any of the documents? 8      MR. MELLOR:  No, my Lord, I regret to say that even bundle 11 is 9          not chronological. 10      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  All right, so 841? 11      MR. MELLOR:  841, my Lord.  This is jumping ahead somewhat to 12          1st March 2007, and this is where Mr. Popkov is explaining to 13          those interested in investing in the second defendant the 14          state of play because by this time the claimant's solicitors 15          had written letters before action to Mr. Popkov and indeed you 16          will see one of the letters before action, 5th February 2007, 17          starting at page 838.  In the e-mail on page 841, just drawing 18          your Lordship's attention to the third bullet point, here he 19          is talking about his i-CD contract, which is this 20          16th December 2003 one:  "By the time of signing my i-CD 21          contract I was not employed by Passado, and in fact I had 22          agreed to sign it only on the basis what I will have nothing 23          to do with Passado whatsoever, concentrating on i-CD (192.com) 24          business only."  My Lord, that is a bare faced lie and that 25          does not even represent the case that he is running before 30 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          your Lordship.  As we will see when we look at the documents 3          surrounding Passado v2, in fact he had the sort of involvement 4          with Passado v2 that one would expect of the software director 5          of a company engaged in such a project. 6                The reason for drawing your Lordship's attention to that 7          is because it may be at least part of the genesis of the 8          argument that Mr. Popkov now seeks to make, and it has been 9          put in various ways.  He says he had almost nothing to do with 10          Passado v2.  Sometimes he suggests that he was involved on a 11          few technical issues, apparently the implication being that he 12          was just being helpful. 13                My Lord, now we are going to turn to the Passado v2 14          project with a view to showing your Lordship just how heavily 15          he was involved in the project.  Your Lordship will have read 16          in the witness statements, particularly of Mr. Crawford, about 17          the gestation of the Passado v2 project.  The gestation was 18          really -- well, it began in 2003.  My Lord, at this point, 19          I will deal with one of the arguments made by the defendants, 20          and that is that Passado v2 was, so they allege, very 21          different from the website that Mr. Popkov launched, 22          odnoklassniki.ru.  This is simply not true.  The position is 23          essentially as follows.  Passado v1 was a simple school 24          reunited website and Odnoklassniki was essentially the same 25          when it launched.  It was a simple schools reunite website. 31 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2                Mr. Crawford and the claimants understood and pursued 3          the concept of launch simple, then elaborate later.  So my 4          Lord, the theory is that you build up with your simple website 5          a substantial body of users.  Then, once you have that 6          substantial body of users, you provide more sophisticated 7          networking for them at a later stage.  My Lord, this launch 8          simple, elaborate later is an idea that is recorded in some of 9          the Passado presentations that Mr. Crawford gave.  I have no 10          doubt, because the first defendants have ensured that there 11          are a very large number of these Passado presentations in the 12          bundles, that they intend to cross-examine at length on these 13          documents.  My Lord, I am going to take you to one on 14          30th June 2003, which is in Bundle 13A at page 307A.  Just to 15          explain what is being talked about in at least the first few 16          pages of this presentation, my Lord, Open BC was another 17          existing website.  What is happening in this presentation is 18          that Mr. Crawford is drawing a distinction between the way 19          that Open BC do it and you will see that in the second slide, 20          they, "...grow a sophisticated network by creating clusters. 21          The network grows organically within communities", and the 22          disadvantages, "it needs to start again in each new sector". 23          Those are expanded in the third slide over the page.  The 24          Passado model is explained in the first two slides:  "First, 25          to grow a simple network; a School Network.  The network is 32 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          simple to understand and join", and so on.  You grow your 3          simple network and by this date Passado is described as having 4          4.3 million registered users, that is through to April 2005. 5                Then, my Lord, the second slide on page 307C:  "Then to 6          overlay the sophisticated network on top of the simple 7          network.  Member profiles are already half completed.  They 8          have seen the magic of the simple network.  The new network 9          spreads more easily across the existing network".  There is 10          further explanation of how that allows networks to spread 11          between countries.  My Lord, we accept entirely, subject to 12          finding another document where it is relevant of the Passado 13          presentations where this is recorded, this appears to be the 14          first actual presentation where this business model is spelt 15          out.  None the less, it is the way that Passado was done. 16          Your Lordship will see that from the e-mail that accompanied 17          that presentation, so if your Lordship would put Bundle 13A 18          away and take out Bundle 11H and turn to page 2892.  This is 19          an e-mail which was sent just really to get the presentation 20          that you have just seen prepared, Alastair Crawford is 21          e-mailing Laurence Fromme and Claudia Helming.  It is all 22          about getting the presentation finalised for tomorrow, by the 23          first hole punch:  "I will get a couple of slides put together 24          by design here to show the different approaches that Open BC 25          and Passado have taken, namely showing how Open BC network 33 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          spreads and has to start again in every country, versus how we 3          do it".  So, my Lord, there may be a lot of debate about this, 4          but we say the start simple, elaborate later idea was i-CD's 5          approach throughout; it is how they did it and it was how they 6          did it long before it was recorded in that presentation on 7          30th June. 8                My Lord, it is certainly true that Passado v2 was going 9          to offer quite a lot more functionality to users but, none the 10          less, the idea was if you were launching Passado in a new 11          country, you would launch with the simple model, build up the 12          database of users and then introduce the more sophisticated 13          product later. 14                So when Passado v2 was being developed, there were 15          obviously two different applications for it.  First of all, 16          you had the existing markets where Passado had already 17          established itself, principally Germany, France, Spain (where 18          it was called Mipasado, Italy where it was called 19          Amiciriuniti.  For new territories the aim would be start 20          simple and add the more elaborate functionality at a suitable 21          point once the user base had been established. 22                My Lord, I am sure that that will be the subject of 23          furious debate by the first defendant in particular, because 24          it is an important plank of their case to try and persuade 25          your Lordship that Odnoklassniki and Passado v2 are different. 34 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          They are not different.  Passado v2 had more functionality in 3          it but the base of it was the same thing. 4                My Lord, so far as the Passado v2 project was concerned, 5          Mr. Popkov was involved throughout.  The first stage was 6          deciding, or rather Mr. Popkov recommending, which language 7          the project should be written in.  My Lord, this decision was 8          not peculiar to Passado.  It also impacted on the work that 9          Mr. Popkov was in charge of for 192 and the debate was whether 10          to rewrite the i-CD software in Java or .NET and, of course, 11          as I said, Mr. Popkov was investigating this issue both for 12          192 software and also for Passado software.  Although he tries 13          to paint the picture in his witness statement that he was not 14          sufficiently qualified in .NET even to oversee the Passado 15          project in late summer of 2004, my Lord, in fact he took the 16          decision early in 2004 to go the .NET route.  It appears that 17          he diligently researched .NET as a programming language from 18          about, from at least March 2004 onwards.  My Lord, in his 19          expense accounts, we can see many Amazon invoices being 20          charged to i-CD for a large number of books relating to 21          software, .NET training manuals and so on. 22                My Lord, I should have said, and I am sure you picked 23          this up, Passado v1 was written in a language called 24          ColdFusion.  Perhaps just taking a few steps back, Mr. Popkov 25          was responsible for recommending to i-CD that their software 35 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          was initially written in ColdFusion, so in the early stages 3          Mr. Popkov recommended ColdFusion and the i-CD and Passado v1 4          were written in ColdFusion.  What Mr. Popkov was considering 5          in early 2002 was whether to effectively move on from 6          ColdFusion to either Java or .NET and as I have explained, he 7          recommended moving to .NET and, of course, Mr. Crawford 8          accepted his recommendation. 9                My Lord, the Passado v2 project was being initiated from 10          around April 2004 and, my Lord, in April 2004 Slava sent 11          through to Mr. Popkov an early business proposal which he 12          wanted to submit to i-CD.  My Lord, we can pick that up in 13          Bundle 11C, page 861.  My Lord, this is an example where Slava 14          sent a document through to Mr. Popkov for his approval before 15          he submitted it to Mr. Crawford.  So this one is entitled 16          "Any.Info Proposal", and your Lordship may just want to flick 17          through it.  It was a part, or at least a precursor to the 18          Passado v2 project.  My Lord, later the same day -- so Slava 19          sends it through to Mr. Popkov at 8.06 in the evening and 20          turning on to page 871, there is a further version sent 21          through from Slava to Mr. Popkov at 11.26 that night.  Then 22          the following day, this is 882, at 11.30 in the morning, Slava 23          sends the improved business proposal through to Mr. Crawford, 24          to Mr. Popkov and to Mr. Stefan Salzbrunn.  There are many 25          examples in the papers of Mr. Popkov doing that -- sorry, 36 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          Slava doing that with Mr. Popkov, getting his input and 3          approval, sometimes of costs, etc., before submitting his 4          proposal to i-CD. 5                My Lord, at this time, this was the start of the 6          competitive bid process and Mr. Popkov recommended another 7          software house in St. Petersburg called Reksoft and we can 8          see, if your Lordship will turn back to page 821 in the same 9          bundle, this was an e-mail from Mr. Crawford to Mr. Popkov 10          actually signed by Mr. Blackburn, Dominic Blackburn:  "Albert, 11          we need Reksoft to sign this document before we send them any 12          specs."  That was a nondisclosure agreement.  In due course, 13          your Lordship may see that Reksoft sent their proposal 14          through.  Mr. Popkov was involved in assessing their proposal. 15          He engaged in a conference call with them on 16th June 2004. 16          My Lord, generally, Mr. Popkov was at this time not only 17          recommending which software house to go with, but also whether 18          to stick with ColdFusion or go .NET. 19                So one of the choices was possibly going with Reksoft 20          and programming in ColdFusion.  Mr. Popkov also sought to 21          involve another software house called Xanadu and your Lordship 22          will see this in the same bundle at page 1007A.  This is an 23          e-mail from Mr. Popkov on Friday, 11th June 2004.  Your 24          Lordship may wish to note his e-mail signature by this date 25          because, of course, in May 2004, he had been appointed 37 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          software director and he signs himself, "Software Director 3          i-CD publishing (UK) Limited", and then the three websites are 4          given, 192.com, mipasado.com and passado.de and, my Lord, he 5          regularly updated his e-mail signature to accurately reflect 6          the Passado websites that were in use.  So in due course, 7          passado.com came on stream and he fairly promptly changed his 8          e-mail signature to include that.  So throughout he was 9          representing himself as software director not only of 192.com 10          but also Passado. 11                My Lord, this is an e-mail in June.  He is writing to 12          somebody he obviously knows at Xanadu.ru:  "Alexey hi" -- he 13          writes in Russian but your Lordship has a translation above 14          the Russian -- "we are thinking of launching a new project 15          (not ColdFusion) Stefan Salzbrunn should contact you, he will 16          be supervising this project.  If you are interested (we are 17          currently taking bids from various companies), let me know 18          when it would be best to have a chat about this."  So just a 19          further indication, my Lord, of Mr. Popkov's role in 20          recommending/assessing software houses for this project.  My 21          Lord, I will not go through all the detail of what took place 22          in the assessment, although there are one or two documents 23          which are rather revealing, bearing in mind Mr. Popkov's 24          protestations that he had virtually nothing to do with this. 25                If your Lordship would kindly turn on to page 1009, this 38 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          is where Mr. Salzbrunn, who was the project manager, was 3          sending out apparently rough drafts of documents, various 4          Passado specifications, Passado terms and differences, etc., 5          and of course Mr. Popkov is an addressee of these 6          specifications.  My Lord, if we turn on to page 1040, we can 7          see an e-mail some five days later where Mr. Popkov is 8          commenting on these documents, perhaps later versions of them, 9          and he is making some pertinent points:  "The requirements 10          document does not cover backend/reporting/mailing integration 11          and other components currently implemented, working and used 12          on passado.  Neither any requirements for third party 13          (partners and affiliates) integration.  Are these components 14          going to be part of a new project?"  And Mr. Salzbrunn 15          responds and in due course that led to another specification 16          being written for those back end requirements.  So again, 17          another example of Mr. Popkov being centrally involved, giving 18          his input to the requirements for this project. 19                My Lord, as I said, I was not going to grind through all 20          of the documents which evidence the assessment of the three 21          software houses.  I am going to jump to one where it is 22          evident that Mr. Popkov is advising Mr. Crawford as to which 23          one to go with.  My Lord, for that we need the next bundle 24          please, 11D, if your Lordship will turn on to 1107.  My Lord, 25          1107 is some chat, as it is called, which took place on 39 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          24th June 2004 between Mr. Popkov and Mr. Crawford.  We can 3          see from the first line that Quantum Art and Reksoft had 4          submitted their bids by this point and Mr. Popkov reports to 5          Mr. Crawford:  "Slava in .NET, Reksoft in ColdFusion". 6          Mr. Crawford says:  "Reksoft are supposed to make a proposal 7          in .NET as an alternative, but they are saying they cannot set 8          a bid at the moment because they need more detailed 9          requirements".  Mr. Popkov says:  "With .NET they cannot 10          guarantee people availability".  It then continues:  "Can only 11          start with two developers and add more as the project goes but 12          not earlier than mid-July".  Mr. Crawford:  "OK, so we forget 13          Reksoft+.NET."  So, my Lord, just an indication of 14          Mr. Crawford's reliance on Mr. Popkov's recommendations as to 15          which house to go with and which language.  Your Lordship will 16          have read that Mr. Crawford himself is not a programmer and 17          has never been a programmer, so he is highly reliant on 18          Mr. Popkov's recommendations. 19                My Lord, just a few pages further on, page 1181, please. 20          Again, another indication of just what I was talking about. 21          Mr. Crawford on 24th June e-mails Mr. Salzbrunn and 22          Mr. Popkov:  "Hi Stefan, Albert, we now have proposals 23          from Slava and Reksoft.  Can we get these evaluated overnight 24          so we can come back to them tomorrow with 25          questions/counter-offer." 40 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2                My Lord, then we move on just a few days to 2nd July, 3          page 1235 in this bundle, please.  This is Slava sending to 4          Mr. Popkov at 10.27 his draft technical proposal on behalf of 5          Quantum Art, we infer for his final approval because about 6          half an hour later, we see this at page 1268, we see Slava 7          sending the final version through to Mr. Crawford, 8          Mr. Salzbrunn, copied to Mr. Popkov. 9                My Lord, things moved relatively rapidly at this point 10          because effectively by this stage, the decision had been taken 11          to go with Quantum Art on Mr. Popkov's recommendation and if 12          your Lordship would turn on to page 1316, this is later on 13          2nd July.  My Lord, what Mr. Crawford has done is put together 14          an e-mail of heads of terms to send to Slava, but before 15          sending it to Slava, he passes it by Mr. Salzbrunn and 16          Mr. Popkov, with a comment "any comments?"  And Mr. Popkov, in 17          something of a Freudian slip, no doubt, says:  "Looks good for 18          me", which indeed it would, because he was going to get 10%, 19          roughly, of the contract price.  Your Lordship sees that 20          e-mail going off to Slava a little bit later at 1318. 21                My Lord, there was a commission agreement for this 22          Passado v2 contract between i-CD and Quantum Art, not between 23          Passado and Quantum Art, it was between i-CD and Quantum Art, 24          and if your Lordship would take Bundle 11E, first of all at 25          page 1656, this is an unsigned copy of the agreement, I think 41 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          in its first draft.  The reason for taking you to it, my Lord, 3          is because it just simply shows the approximate time that they 4          were envisaging at the date of the agreement, it is dated 5          Monday 9th August, and this copy was actually e-mailed on 6          25th August.  If your Lordship turns on to 1659, my Lord, your 7          Lordship sees the stages then envisaged -- alpha by 8          August 8th, beta by August 31st, final September 20th, 2004. 9          So at least at this stage, the Passado v2 project was set to 10          be only about two and a half months, maybe three months in 11          duration.  Your Lordship may not be massively surprised to 12          notice that these dates slipped back, so that, as we 13          understand it, in the final version of the contract, and your 14          Lordship will find that at 1698 this version was e-mailed on 15          2nd September.  My Lord, it shows the amendments over the 16          previous version but in clause 6 at page 1701, although the 17          alpha date has not moved, beta his slipped back to 18          8th September and the final version to October 18th. 19                My Lord, none the less, the Passado v2 project, if it 20          had run according to plan, would have been three, three and a 21          half months in duration.  Indeed, my Lord, all the copies of 22          this agreement record in clause 2.3 that the commission shall 23          begin on July 5th, 2004.  Your Lordship sees that in any 24          version of the agreement, for example at page 1700. 25          Certainly, my Lord, it appears that Quantum Art did get 42 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          started on 5th July because we have a weekly project plan for 3          that date. 4                My Lord, Mr. Popkov was also involved in other aspects 5          of the Passado v2 project.  One, in particular, was recruiting 6          a project manager to work, a technical project manager, to 7          work with the Quantum Art team in Moscow.  My Lord, at this 8          point, I will hand up a diagram of what we say was the 9          organisation of the Passado v2 project, although I think this 10          was sent to my learned friends yesterday.  (Same handed)  My 11          Lord, this is something that Mr. Crawford explained to me in 12          the last few days and I found it invaluable to understand what 13          is going on.  My Lord, I think we have an X bundle and maybe 14          just so that we do not lose it, this should become X1.  It may 15          be helpful just to explain to your Lordship what if structure 16          was.  Your Lordship sees it was something of an international 17          project.  The two participants of i-CD in London were 18          Mr. Crawford and Mr. Popkov and we divide their roles as 19          non-technical for Mr. Crawford and technical for Mr. Popkov. 20          Mr. Salzbrunn, he came into the Passado project as originally, 21          he ran a web hosting business called Interlake in Germany. 22          Interlake hosted the Passado v1 websites and eventually that 23          led to Mr. Salzbrunn being the technical project manager for 24          Passado v2.  Although he has technical abilities, in the sense 25          that he knows how to host a website, he is not a programmer 43 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          and for this project he was a part-time consultant, split 3          between Germany and later Florida. 4                My Lord, then we move to Moscow.  In Moscow there were a 5          group of people who styled themselves "the Passado team." 6          They were led by Mr. Fromme, who was a linguist but he did not 7          speak Russian; so he was, as we have described, a 8          non-technical project manager.  Other personnel, Claudia 9          Helming, she was the country manager for Germany and also 10          consultant.  Mr. Fromme was the only employee of Passado 11          Limited in this Passado team.  Michael Puetz, he with 12          Ms. Helming were the original owners of the -- sorry, only 13          Puetz was an owner of the Passado.de business and so he had a 14          role in technical support with some project management 15          focusing on bug identification and testing; again, he was a 16          consultant.  My Lord, at various times, other people were part 17          of this Passado team, including other country managers who 18          were not in Moscow, like Ernesto Bernado.  None of the Passado 19          team, although they were gathered together in Russia and they 20          had an office inside Quantum Art's offices, none of them spoke 21          Russian. 22                On the technical side you had the various people working 23          at Quantum Art, specifically the developers were led by Igor 24          Grinev and there were three other slightly more junior 25          developers and one float developer, depending on various 44 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          tasks.  So far as the administration on the Quantum Art side 3          is concerned, Slava was obviously the boss, he was involved in 4          negotiating the contract and invoicing and generally running 5          the team.  Mikhail Chekanov was the technical project manager 6          for the Quantum Art developers and he was the man who 7          Mr. Popkov was involved in recruiting and interviewing 8          candidates for that role. 9                My Lord, the significance of the colours are set out at 10          the bottom.  Those, the red boxes indicate people who had 11          contracts with i-CD only.  It is certainly true to say that 12          Quantum Art before this time had a maintenance contract with 13          Passado to run the Passado v1 website and to fix bugs 14          concerned with that.  Mr. Crawford and Mr. Salzbrunn had 15          contracts with both i-CD and Passado or Carlene, because in 16          2002, the Passado business, your Lordship will recall, had 17          been spun out from i-CD to Carlene.  My Lord, that is 18          reflected in the notes on the second page, where we have 19          attempted to draw out some of what one might call 20          complications as to the relationship between i-CD and Passado. 21      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Before we get on to that, I notice that there 22          is no line from the Popkov box to the Passado team box. 23          I take it that is deliberate? 24      MR. MELLOR:  Yes, my Lord, I think it is fair to say that 25          anything, any comments, any communications between Mr. Popkov 45 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          and the Passado team would have gone through Mr. Salzbrunn. 3          At least that, I think, was the intention, but probably also 4          the reality as well.  My Lord, the point about the Passado 5          team is that they were on the non-technical side dealing with 6          the user interface, the look of the website.  None of them had 7          the ability to review code which was written by Quantum Art. 8          Indeed, my Lord, the only person who had the ability to review 9          code written by Quantum Art was Mr. Popkov.  So, my Lord, in 10          the notes, we have drawn attention to various documents. 11          I will not take you to all of those now, but it gives you 12          hopefully a convenient group of references which relate or 13          stand behind the organisation chart that we show on page 1. 14                My Lord, in July 2004, as programming was just getting 15          going, or at least the initial stages, Mr. Popkov made two 16          visits to Moscow.  The first one was the 10th to 13th July of 17          2004.  My Lord, just before he went, on 9th July (and I am 18          afraid for this we need to go back to bundle 11D, page 1326), 19          these are a series of e-mails on 9th July between people at 20          Quantum Art and Mr. Popkov and the one at the bottom is 21          translated over the page.  In fact, Mr. Popkov's e-mail and 22          the one below it is translated over the page.  Your Lordship 23          sees that what was being sent to Mr. Popkov on 9th July was 24          effectively a schedule of interviewees that he was due to 25          interview.  Your Lordship will note, at 1 o'clock, Guzev Vadim 46 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          was recruited as one of the programmers working for Quantum 3          Art ---- 4      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  What is the subject?  It does not appear to 5          have been translated. 6      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, no.  We will see if we can remedy that, my 7          Lord.  We will see Mr. Popkov responds:  "If you can you ask 8          them to send their CVs in both Russian and English otherwise 9          I am going to be worn out in translating them". 10      MR. SAMEK:  My Lord, I can assist, it means resumé.  One can just 11          about read that. 12      MR. MELLOR:  Thank you very much.  So, my Lord, what Mr. Popkov 13          was involved in, the purpose of this trip was supposed to be 14          interviewing both programmers and project manager.  In fact, 15          not all the planned interviews took place, which is why, if 16          your Lordship -- we still need 11D, I am afraid.  Your 17          Lordship will see in due course that the day after Mr. Popkov 18          got back from Russia on this trip, the 14th, he received 19          another 20 CVs and eventually Mr. Chekanov was recruited after 20          Mr. Popkov interviewed him on the second trip.  In addition to 21          interviewing programmers on that trip between the 10th and 22          13th July, Mr. Popkov was involved in the detailed design of 23          the Passado v2 software.  It started with the database schema. 24          Your Lordship will see in due course, and it makes perfect 25          sense, that when you are designing the core of a software 47 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          system, you design your database schema and, at the same time, 3          you are designing the core architecture of the system.  My 4          Lord, we are fortunate that we have some surviving internet 5          chat that records this.  It is in bundle 11D at page 1336.  My 6          Lord, this was some chat between Paul Broome at 192.com -- 7          Paul Broome, just to explain, had been brought in as IT 8          director alongside Mr. Popkov as software director at i-CD, 9          and of course Mr. Broome was in London, Mr. Popkov was in 10          Moscow and Paul opens the chat:  "Hope Moscow is good, I need 11          a short tech overview of Passado - can you oblige -- five to 12          ten lines."  So Mr. Broome was asking Mr. Popkov to write a 13          tech overview of Passado and it was actually for use in 14          I think a presentation.  Mr. Popkov replies:  "Stefan will do 15          this."  Mr. Popkov responds:  "How is everything in the 16          office?"  Response: "All OK amazing."  Albert says:  "I have 17          not finished the database schema part with Stefan" -- and that 18          is a symbol for a glum face -- "need three four hours more -- 19          hopefully will send out before tomorrow morning."  There are 20          various other points, but this piece of chat is important 21          because it records Mr. Popkov working on the database schema 22          in Moscow.  It can only be a reference to the Passado v2 23          database schema because it is "for Stefan" and Stefan had no 24          role other than in relation to Passado v2. 25      MR. SAMEK:  My Lord, I am sorry to interrupt, just for your 48 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          Lordship's note, I am told that it is not Stefan Salzbrunn, it 3          is Stefan the programmer at i-CD.  I am told it is Stefan 4          Endlich(?), not Salzbrunn; but maybe Mr. Mellor will explain 5          why he thinks it is Stefan Salzbrunn. 6      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, that is the first time we have had that 7          explanation.  We will investigate it.  It is curious that 8          Stefan has been already referred to two/three lines up in 9          relation to short tech overview of Passado but no doubt we 10          will explore this in cross-examination.  At least we know 11          something of Mr. Popkov's explanation.  Be that at it may, at 12          this period, this is precisely when the database schema and 13          core architecture for Passado v2 was being designed.  My Lord, 14          our case is that Mr. Popkov, on his visit to Russia, was 15          sitting down, either by himself, most likely with Igor Grinev 16          the lead developer, they were together working out the 17          database schema and the core architecture for the Passado v2 18          project. 19                My Lord, just as an aside, I mentioned Mr. Popkov made 20          two visits to Russia in July.  The second one was on 21st to 21          26th July.  I will take you to a few details in relation to 22          that in a moment but, my Lord, the aside that I wanted to 23          refer to was the topic of the recharges from i-CD to Passado 24          for Mr. Popkov's time because your Lordship will recollect 25          from the start of Mr. Popkov's statement that he places great 49 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          store by these recharges, and indeed places great emphasis on 3          the fact that there were no recharges for his time in 2005. 4          Now, of course, that rather misses the point because the key 5          development of Passado v2 was taking place over these months 6          July/August/September 2004 and I think even Mr. Popkov accepts 7          that around 10% of his time was charged to Passado over those 8          months.  In fact, in July 2004, 10% was Mr. Popkov's initial 9          feel for how much time should be recharged and, my Lord, 10          recently we have dug out another e-mail where Mr. Popkov 11          immediately changes his mind and says, "No, 15%" and he 12          explains the change because he has taken two trips to Moscow 13          in July.  So my Lord, the indication is those two trips were 14          involved with Passado. 15      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Can you give me the reference to that e-mail? 16      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, let me see if I can find it.  11OA 70(A)(i). 17      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  This does not sound like the best numbering 18          system. 19      MR. MELLOR:  My learned friend, this is one of the bundles that 20          has grown like Topsy in the last 24 hours, I am afraid.  I 21          hope your Lordship has an 11OA? 22      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Yes.  I have the e-mail. 23      MR. MELLOR:  I hope you have 70(A). 24      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  I have read that. 25      MR. MELLOR:  Not more than 10%, mostly from overtime anyway, then 50 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          one minute later he changes his mind, "Sorry, more than that, 3          I went to Moscow twice so 15%."  So, my Lord, the estimation 4          was not very scientific, it was a sort of gut feel sort of 5          stuff, but the indications are that he went to Moscow twice 6          for Passado.  We will investigate what i-CD projects were 7          being undertaken at the time.  Your Lordship will note from 8          Mr. Crawford's and Mr. Marsden's witness statements that 9          generally the amount of work done by Quantum Art for i-CD was 10          very small compared with the work done by Quantum Art on 11          Passado projects. 12                My Lord, the wider point is this.  We ask rhetorically, 13          why would not your software director, when in Moscow at the 14          start of a new project, why would he not be involved in 15          designing the database schema and the core architecture of a 16          new project? 17      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  That leads on to an interesting question, 18          does it not, because it leads on to the question of who was 19          designing Passado v2.  No doubt the defendants' case will be 20          to say that essentially it was Quantum Art.  I may be wrong 21          about that, but I think that is what they are saying.  That 22          leads on to another question, which is what is the best 23          evidence as to who was doing the work of first, designing and, 24          secondly, coding Passado v2?  Who on your side do you say 25          gives the best evidence about that? 51 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, it is probably Mr. Crawford. 3      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  He cannot, for the reason you gave me earlier 4          this afternoon. 5      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, except -- your Lordship is adverting to the 6          fact that Mr. Crawford himself is not a programmer.  None the 7          less, he was there at the time.  By this stage he has quite a 8          long relationship with Mr. Popkov.  Their offices are very 9          close to each other.  They do not need -- you know, when they 10          are both in the office, they do not need to send e-mails to 11          each other.  You have seen an example of chat where they are 12          in different places but, my Lord, generally, they can put 13          their head round the other's door and say, "What's going on?" 14          etc.  My Lord, that is a key point in this case.  The 15          defendants seem to be running a case that if it is not 16          recorded in a document, it did not happen, and that is unreal; 17          because the sort of communication that you would have between 18          Mr. Crawford and Mr. Popkov day-to-day is unlikely to have 19          taken place in e-mails and documents.  They were chatting 20          every day about what was going on, what needed doing. 21      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Can we go back to X1? 22      MR. MELLOR:  Sure. 23      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  I want to see if I have this straight.  You 24          are leading evidence from Mr. Crawford and Mr. Salzbrunn. 25      MR. MELLOR:  Yes. 52 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  You are not leading evidence from Mr. Fromme, 3          Ms. Helming or Mr. Puetz? 4      MR. MELLOR:  No. 5      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Mr. Popkov is giving evidence, likewise 6          Mr. Evtuhovich, if I have pronounced his name correctly, which 7          I doubt, and Mr. Guzev, we do not have evidence from 8          Tretyakov, Slava or Chekanov, or Grinev. 9      MR. MELLOR:  Or Grinev. 10      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Even though Grinev and Slava are sure, maybe 11          Chekanov I am not sure about that, but Grinev and Slava are on 12          the defendant's allocation questionnaire as being witnesses. 13      MR. MELLOR:  Indeed, and your Lordship may know that Mr. Grinev in 14          the last few days supplied a selection of e-mails to 15          Mr. Popkov.  It is a selection which appears to involve 16          e-mails involving Mr. Salzbrunn, so it is by no means a 17          complete set.  So Mr. Grinev has very recently supplied a 18          selection of e-mails to Mr. Popkov, even though Mr. Grinev 19          told Mr. Crawford some, perhaps a year ago that the archive 20          had been lost.  Slava is still very much, we say, in 21          Mr. Popkov's camp, but is not coming to give evidence, that is 22          true. 23      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  But, coming back to the question I asked 24          earlier, one would have thought, looking at the diagram, 25          Mr. Salzbrunn would be in a position to know who designed the 53 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          software. 3      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, well, I do not have every detail of his 4          witness statement fully in mind.  He may be in a position to 5          shed some light on it.  I cannot remember now.  But he may not 6          because, after all, as I understand it, Mr. Salzbrunn did not 7          speak Russian either and so, if Mr. Popkov was holed up in a 8          room with Mr. Grinev, doing the database schema and core 9          architecture for Passado v2, Mr. Salzbrunn might or might not 10          know what they were doing. 11      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  All right.  Has anybody actually looked at 12          the source code for Passado v2? 13      MR. SAMEK:  Yes.  My Lord, yes, the experts have, or at least 14          Mr. Chiu has. 15      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, what I will do ----- 16      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Sometimes, not always, you can tell quite a 17          lot about authorship of source code by looking at it. 18      MR. MELLOR:  Yes, my Lord, although .NET is one of those quite 19          powerful languages that does an awful lot of the work for you; 20          which is why, actually, the database schema and core 21          architecture need very careful thought before you go into the 22          coding stage.  My Lord, our case is that Mr. Popkov did not 23          actually do any of the coding, the actual coding of 24          Passado v2, but that he was intimately involved in designing, 25          either himself or with Igor Grinev, the database schema and 54 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          the core architecture. 3                My Lord, perhaps early tomorrow morning I will show you 4          the other database schemas that were being designed by 5          Mr. Popkov in 2004, because here we are in July 2004 and 6          Mr. Popkov has already made a database schema for 7          Odnoklassniki.  He made that in January 2004.  The other 8          highlight which comes out of the various database schemas that 9          he created in 2004, he was working again on the Odnoklassniki 10          database schema in October 2004.  My Lord, it is around that 11          time, in October 2004, that Mr. Popkov effectively turned his 12          back on the Passado project. 13      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  What do you mean by that? 14      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, with the benefit of hindsight, up to about 15          5th October, we can see regular reporting by Slava to 16          Mr. Popkov of progress on Passado v2.  Mr. Popkov is copied in 17          on e-mails when particular versions of the software were 18          uploaded to the development server and so, for example, he is 19          copied in on e-mails saying, "latest version has been 20          uploaded, please have a look at it."  I will pick up those 21          e-mails in the morning. 22                So, my Lord, up to about October, all the appearances 23          are that Mr. Popkov was undertaking exactly the role that you 24          would expect of the software director.  He was, as he admits 25          for Passado v1, we say, reviewing the Quantum Art code from a 55 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2          quality perspective.  That is what he should have been doing. 3          It appears that at some point he, as I said, turned his back 4          on the code, decided not to bother, perhaps, with it, and that 5          point coincides with him doing further work on his 6          Odnoklassniki database schema and the initial Odnoklassniki 7          code. 8                My Lord, is that a convenient moment? 9      MR. SAMEK:  My Lord, can I just rise in relation to your 10          Lordship's last question about has anybody looked at the 11          Passado software source code. 12      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  That question was directed to Mr. Mellor, not 13          to you.  I appreciate that Dr. Chiu has looked at it. 14      MR. SAMEK:  Your Lordship sees that. 15      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  But he answered my question in a different 16          way, so do not worry.  Very good.  Not before 10.30 tomorrow 17          as I have another matter listed at 10.  Now, last housekeeping 18          point for today.  As you are aware, we were planning to be in 19          court 73 on the belief that it was going to be available today 20          but in fact it turned out not to be available today and 21          therefore it seemed to me it was better to at least try and 22          make a start in this court.  Now we are all in here, do you 23          all have a view as to whether this is workable or do you 24          consider that we should move to court 73 if and when it 25          becomes available? 56 1                               MR. MELLOR - OPENING 2      MR. MELLOR:  My Lord, certainly from my point of view, it is 3          certainly not brilliant, because I do not have access to all 4          my bundles.  So unless I squeeze my learned friends quite a 5          bit, this is quite difficult for me, so I would support a move 6          to a bigger court. 7      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  Mr. Samek? 8      MR. SAMEK:  My Lord, I think now that we are here, we are happy 9          here but I would not want my learned friends to be 10          inconvenienced so, ultimately, it is a matter for your 11          Lordship and where your Lordship wants to sit in judgment. 12      MR. BLOCH:  I have the casting vote at least between counsel.  It 13          would be to move. 14      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  You think it would be better to move? 15      MR. BLOCH:  Indeed. 16      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  If we are going to move, the obvious point at 17          which to do so is after the end of opening submissions and 18          before we get into the evidence.  Would everybody agree with 19          that? 20      MR. BLOCH:  Yes. 21      MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD:  We will review that question tomorrow when we 22          know a little more clearly what the status of court 73 is. 23          10.30 tomorrow. 24                     (Adjourned till 10.30 tomorrow morning) 25 57


title: «Озон» получил свою первую премию Рунета

content: 25-го ноября в московском кинотеатре "Октябрь" прошло вручение "Премий Рунета". Предшествующие церемонии рекламные ролики, говорили нам о том, что в этот раз «все будет по другому». И действительно, все было по другому - вместо официальной церемонии, ведущие активно шутили и переодически агитировали фоловить Тину Канделаки в твиттере. А все остальное, осталось по старому - за статуэтками выходили все те же люди, большинство лауреатов использовали дополнительную возможность попиарить свой проект.Новости СМИ2  Новости СМИ2  Примечательно, что в этом году Премия Рунета не осталась без внимания Президента России. Он поздравил лауреатов в своем твиттере, написав «К сожалению, не могу лично поздравить победителей @PremiaRuneta. Поэтому заочно. Вы молодцы, успехов вам! )» Среди лауреатов Премии Рунета стоит отметить проекты: Онлайн кинотеатр ivi.ru,  Один дома,  Альберт Попков и его новый проект Сравни.ру,«Мое дело»,  Yota, которые работают в достаточно новых для Рунета нишах и создают что-то достойное внимания. Папой рунета назвали Алексея Солдатова, замминистра по информационным технологиям (так совпало, что вчера у Солдатова был день рождения, поздравляем). Самой курьезной благодарственной речью отметился Ozon.ru, представитель которого отметил, что это их первая Премия Рунета возможно лишь потому, что на предыдущие они просто забывали номинироваться.