Russian Money Transfer Firm Clashes With Sweden Over Crown Logo

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th January, 2022) Russian online money transfer service KoronaPay argued on Tuesday that it did not seek to monetize the likeness of the Swedish royal crown with its logo.

The fintech firm has been expanding its outreach in Europe since 2020, after becoming Russia's largest online money transmitter, but it has faced obstacles in the Nordic country, a constitutional monarchy, after its patent regulator ruled that the crown-styled logo of KoronaPay, literally "crown pay," resembled the official Swedish ceremonial crown.

"We want to get the message across that the crown symbol in KoronaPay's logo does not exploit royal symbols or historical memory of any country.

You can compare KoronaPay's crown logo to the king symbol in chess," Nikolai Smirnov, the company's board chair, said in a statement.

KoronaPay's lawyers called Sweden's approach "too scrupulous" and possibly politically motivated. Smirnov said the company was in dialogue with the Swedish regulator and would challenge its decision. The logo has been registered in Spain, also a monarchy, as well as in Austria, Germany, Hungary, Portugal and other countries with a rich royal history.