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The company eMoney Services, which owns the rights to the Prague multi-purpose Opencard has filed a law suit against the city of Prague and the Prague Transport Authority. The company claims it is owed 40 million crowns for rights to the card and another 30 million crowns for services provided for Opencard’s operation. City Hall has been locked in a drawn-out dispute with eMoneyServices and took over the running of the card after the contract for its operation expired. However it lacks the right to change or re-programme the existing software. Prague’s Municipal Court recently issued a preliminary order preventing the firm eMoneyServices from blocking Prague’s transport card, a step that would have affected close to one million city transport users.

Hundreds of film fans have been queuing up for tickets to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival which is due to kick off on Friday. The festival offers viewers over 200 films, including seven international premieres, two Czech premieres and, for the first time ever, an animated film. The festival will open with the international premiere of the American sci-fi I Origins, which will be personally introduced by the film’s lead actor Michael Pitt, director Mike Cahill and actress Astrid Bergès-Frisbey. Among this year’s celebrity guests are Mel Gibson, Michael Pitt, French actress Fanny Ardante who will present her third film Obsessive Rhythms for which she wrote the screenplay and directed and award-winning Hollywood actress Laura Dern.

Coalition parties appear to have patched up but not fully resolved their clash over the share out of seats on supervisory boards of state companies. Last week’s move by ANO leader and finance minister, Andrej Babiš, to replace a swathe of board members at state controlled power company ČEZ with his nominees created anger, particularly from the smallest party the Christian Democrats, which found it had no representative on the board. Wednesday’s meeting of party leaders resulted in agreement that the Christian Democrats would put forward its candidate to be reviewed by the finance ministry. Social Democrat leader and prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka admitted afterwards that full agreement had not been reached. ANO bosses continued to argue that the ministry responsible for the state company should have the right to decide how to fill the board, a policy which is in conflict with the share out policy of recent years.

The Czech Republic has the highest Internet use in the whole of Central Europe according to the results of a survey released on Wednesday by the Gemius company. It said 96 percent of Czech of active age use the Internet compared with 85 percent of Estonians and 79 percent of Latvians. Leaving aside the Czech Republic, Internet use in the other Visegrad four states of Central Europe, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, ranged between 65 and 75 percent, the survey said. With 6.7 million Internet users, the Czech Republic is the second biggest Internet market in the region behind Poland.