Source: https://roem.ru/26-11-2009/125058/insayd-stenogramma-preniy-v-sude-po-isku-i-cd-publishing-k-albertu-popkovu/
Timestamp: 2019-08-23 00:07:07
Document Index: 741325660

Matched Legal Cases: ['arty\n21', 'art\n14', 'art\n3', 'art.\n10', 'art\n20', 'arty\n13', 'Art,\n24', 'art\n17', 'Art.\n8']

Инсайд: Стенограмма прений в суде по иску i-CD Publishing к Альберту Попкову → Roem.ru
Инсайд: Стенограмма прений в суде по иску i-CD Publishing к Альберту Попкову
26 ноября 2009 в 01:30
Альберт Попков, Одноклассники, Суд ru-RU 2009 ООО «Роем» Текучка
--- Дата публикации была изменена по техническим причинам. Реальная дата публикации — 26 ноября ------- 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE Claim No. HC 08 C00441 CHANCERY DIVISION 2 INTELLECTUAL
--- Дата публикации была изменена по техническим причинам. Реальная дата публикации — 26 ноября -------
1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE Claim No. HC 08 C00441
Strand, London WC2A 3LL
6 Before:
7 MR. JUSTICE ARNOLD
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)
13 - and —
14 (1) ALBERT POPKOV
(2) ODNOKLASSNIKI LIMITED
15 (3) OOO ODNOKLASSNIKI
(a company incorporated under the laws of Russia)
16 Defendants
ALASTAIR DUNCAN HADFIELD CRAWFORD
18 Third Party
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)
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.
MR. CHARLES SAMEK QC, MR. BRIAN LACY and
5 MS. ANNA EDWARDS-STUART (instructed by Messrs. Bird &
Bird LLP) appeared for the First Defendant.
MR. MICHAEL BLOCH QC, MR. TOM MITCHESON, and
7 MR. JAMES WALMSLEY (instructed by Messrs. Nabarro LLP)
appeared for the Second and Third Defendants.
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
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
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 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.
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 «al part
14 of that paragraph, it says: «192.com servers are able to
15 collect the database allowing the AP site to launch with»===>
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
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
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 repor«me 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
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
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 «ima»===>
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.
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
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
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
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 th« He is
14 Lordship sees further down: «I'm going back to »on
15 Monday, it will be Christmas here.» Christm«ussia 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.abou»ounds). For now my plans f«==>
19 Tuesday» -- that is 8th Ja»- «are to meet Slava and
20 Dmitry» -- that is Slava at Quantum A«try is the
21 designer of the pop-up -- «and another development team I
22 found recently and visit .ru domains registra»fice 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
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 «
»> 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
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
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.
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
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,
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.
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.
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
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 wa«o»asniki»
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
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 » 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 emplo«i-CD,
» 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«A===>
» 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»laquo;register domain
« 20 names (Albert?)» and then in the third colum»o;looks like no
21 progress in two weeks» and various other tasks for Albert are«>
22 in that second column. There is a co»laquo;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
2 on 20th May to Alexey Bushnev, Laurence Fromme,«ir
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.russi»==>
6 domain name — registered (on 15 jan 2002)». My Lord that is a
7 reference to the firs«n name, that is odnoklassniki.ru.
8 -- «alternative name [th»dnoklasniki.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,«is a list by the second
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
2 chronological bundle, which is 11, particular documents which
3 are in 13. My Lord, «l also see bund»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 contr«ich 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, co»ting 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
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.
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 y« see that in the second slide,
20 they, «…grow a sophisticated network by creating clusters.
21 The network grows organically within«ities», and the
2» disadvantages, «it needs to start again in each new sector».
23 Those are expanded in the third slide over the page. The
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25 to grow a simple network; a School Network. The network is
1 MR. ME»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.
<>, 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 finali« 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
2 spreads and has to start»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.
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
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 i«. Crawford. So t» 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,
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
, Dominic Blackburn: «Albert,
11 we need Reksoft to sign »cument 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
1 MR. MELLOR — OPEN«===>
2 software director and he signs himself, «So»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«>
» somebody he obviously knows at Xanadu.ru: «Alexey hi» -- he
13 writes in Russian but your Lord«s 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
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 the«==>
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 c»ts
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
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 poi«Mr. Popkov reports to
, Reksof«ldFusion».
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 » they need more detai«===>
9 requirements». Mr. Popkov says: «With .N» cannot
« guarantee people availability». It then continues: «Can only
11 start with two developers and add more as th»ct goes but
12 not earlier than mid-July». Mr. Craw»«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 «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»omorrow with
25 questions/counter-offer.»
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 M«brunn and
16 Mr. Popkov, with a comment «any comments?» And Mr. Popkov, in
17 something of a Freudian sli»oubt, 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
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
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
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 w«cA===>
» 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
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
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
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, «==>
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
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. Pop« in
10 Moscow and Paul opens the chat: «Hope Moscow is good, I need
11 a short tech overview of Pa» 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. »replies: «Stefan «
15 this.» Mr. Popkov respon»aquo;How is «ing in the
16 «ice?» Response: «All OK amazing.» Albert says: «I have
17 not finished the database schema part with Stefan»« 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 t«ado 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
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
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. Po«A===>
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
1 MR. MELLOR — OP«cA===>
2 one minute later he changes his mind, «Sorry, mo» 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?
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.
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
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
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
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 «, he is
19 copied in on e-mails saying, «latest version »n
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
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
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?
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
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)
Быстрый поиск: Альберт Попков, Одноклассники, Суд.
26 ноября 2009 в 03:08 Ответить
Что-то мне подсказывает, что тот, кто это запостил, или не был в числе тех, кто договаривались, или очень хочет меня (или кого-то еще) спровоцировать эти договоренности нарушить… Уважаемый, а вы уверены, что все о чем там говорится — правда, и, более того, что документы на которые ссыллаются с самого начала (и даты на них) — достоверны? ;) Как _Вы_ думаете, что на самом деле в итоге произошло? Или от Вас что-то скрыли?)))
26 ноября 2009 в 03:28 Ответить
Ишь, как засуетился… просрал дело… То заявлял что чистый и белый, борьба до полной победы и всех порву в клочья, а теперь на мировую… Всплыло что-то, Алик? Такое, за что любых денег не жалко, лишь бы утаили?
26 ноября 2009 в 03:39 Ответить
Вот значит кому не спится в 3 ночи… Alter Ego, я тебя знаю © Но, так — нечестно, я даже не могу сказать, кто настоял на «утаили», как и на чем-то из остального. Прошу только, не каверкай что-то и не выхватывай из контекста, если уж так неймется цитировать.
26 ноября 2009 в 03:54 Ответить
Если ты меня знаешь, значит — Синодова под суд за раскрытие инфы. У кого три ночи, а у кого VPN и разгар дня. А чего выхватывать. Суть соглашения не известна, к сожалению. Но если есть в показаниях какое-то вранье, то сгенерировано оно вами, г-н Попков. С маленькой буквы, так как без уважения. Соглашаются на мировую или до суда вообще, чтобы на адвокатах экономить. А это уже черт знает какая итерация. Значит — рыльце в пушку. Все остальное — лирика. Год платить адвокатам, чтобы потом согласится на мировую (на все или частично- узнаем позже, попкорна у нас полно), можно только в том случае, если всплыли неопровержимые доказательства. Но вы пойте, пойте, альберт. Даже если по мировой вы им рубль заплатили. Без вас будет ощущение переплаты за билеты.
26 ноября 2009 в 03:58 Ответить
Alter Ego, Вам ту самую долю о которой Вы так искренне рассказывали не дали или что, я не пойму? Что Вас так лишает сна?
26 ноября 2009 в 04:14 Ответить
26 ноября 2009 в 04:18 Ответить
Alexgriffin, «разгар дня» сейчас — это Австралия или Чукотка?
26 ноября 2009 в 04:24 Ответить
26 ноября 2009 в 04:32 Ответить
26 ноября 2009 в 04:34 Ответить
you only do it ’cause you can you only say it ’cause you can i’m supposed to take it like a man what if i can? i can’t give more you can’t take more you only do it ’cause you can you only say it ’cause you can i’m supposed to take it like a man what if i can?
26 ноября 2009 в 04:51 Ответить
кстати, не корысти ради, просто из любопытства, в Таиланде есть специальная рассылка «стенограммы британского суда»?
26 ноября 2009 в 04:56 Ответить
26 ноября 2009 в 05:01 Ответить
Вы же знаете ответ на этот вопрос, как и то, почему я задал мой?
26 ноября 2009 в 05:02 Ответить
คุณ จะ ไม่ ทำให้ ‘คุณ สามารถ คุณ จะ กล่าว ทำให้ ‘คุณ สามารถ ฉัน ควร จะ เอา มัน เหมือน มนุษย์ หาก ฉัน สามารถ? ฉัน ไม่ สามารถ ให้ มาก ขึ้น คุณ ไม่ สามารถ ใช้ เวลา มาก ขึ้น คุณ จะ ไม่ ทำให้ ‘คุณ สามารถ คุณ จะ กล่าว ทำให้ ‘คุณ สามารถ ฉัน ควร จะ เอา มัน เหมือน มนุษย์ หาก ฉัน สามารถ?
26 ноября 2009 в 05:09 Ответить
26 ноября 2009 в 05:37 Ответить
Файтинга не вышло…
26 ноября 2009 в 14:50 Ответить
Бердий, залогинтесь